The research study had a different outcome than what was expected. There was no significance between a person’s mood state and the type of words recalled. As expected, subjects did recall more positive words more than negative words, but it wasn’t significant. No significance was found between positive mood and the critical positive lure word. Unexpectedly, subjects with a negative mood were more likely to recall a positive lure word. Negative mood and the negative lure word were not significant. Subjects with negative mood were more likely to recall the negative lure word. Gender and age was also taken into consideration but there were no significant results. There were some flaws that could be improved for future research. One of the confounds was the history effect. The participants could’ve been distracted by …show more content…
Instead of presenting the words one-by-one, the words can be in its original list form. Another way to present the words is to speak it out loud to make it more challenging. The way the words are displayed can have a significant impact on the outcome of the results.
Furthermore, to ensure that the participants are in a specific mood state, researchers should try to induce mood. For example, to induce negative mood, a clip about school finals and final projects can be shown to ensure they are in a negative mood state. Another way to induce mood is to show happy or sad pictures. A picture of a beach with bright colors can increase the probability of a happy mood state.
One of the many adjustments that should be made, for future research, is lowering the amount of time the participants should be given to write down the words. The two minutes that was given to the participants was longer than expected. In about 30 seconds they would drop their pencils to wait for the second list, giving participants time to get distracted. A more reasonable time would be about one