Date of Award

5-2024

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Honors Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Karina Hamamouche

Second Advisor

Tara Lineweaver

Abstract

In this thesis, I researched how music is intertwined with mood and in what ways it can affect one’s memory. A lot of research indicates that mood can affect one’s memory (e.g., Lee & Sternthal, 1999). For example, it was found that respondents remember information better when in a positive mood rather than a neutral mood. Yet, other research has found that positive moods can reduce the processing of information (Lee & Sternthal, 1999). Additionally, research shows that having a mood in one setting can encourage the recall of information obtained in that setting when the same mood occurs later on (“the mood congruency effect”; Singer & Salovey, 2002). In this study, I aimed to discover whether 1) different kinds of music would induce different kinds of moods, 2) the mood would influence one’s memory, specifically that participants listening to calm or happy music during both studying and testing would have increased memory performance, and 3) one’s memory performance would be better when in a more positive mood and listening to happier music. To research this, I designed an experiment in which 80 participants (70 females) studied for and completed a basic, computerized memory test under five different conditions of listening to music at either the learning phase, the learning phase and the testing phase, or neither. During this experiment, participants completed a survey on metacognition, studied a list of 25 word pairings either while listening to music or not (dependent on condition), completed a math distractor task, and took a memory test while listening to music or not (dependent on condition), while also completing multiple mood rating checks throughout. Although we did not see an effect of mood or music on memory, these results do imply that music may be an effective tool in combating feelings of sadness while completing math tasks.

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