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Memory and hedonic tone: ‘personality’ or ‘mood’ congruence?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Gabriel Desrosiers  and
David Robinson
Gabriel Desrosiers*
Affiliation:
Badham Clinic; Psychology Department, University of Sydney, Australia
David Robinson
Affiliation:
Badham Clinic; Psychology Department, University of Sydney, Australia
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr G. desRosiers, University of Cambridge, Department of Psychiatry, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ.
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Synopsis

Four groups of healthy women matched for age and IQ were reliably classified on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire as being either high or low in extraversion or neuroticism. As part of a larger research project, each participant was administered a range of psychometric measures together with three paired-associate learning lists varying in hedonic tone and difficulty levels together with the Beck Depression Inventory. Performance on the hedonic lists covaried with personality categories but, unlike what typically obtains in clinical patients, less association emerged between performance and mood states. Performance was particularly polarized in women scoring high in neuroticism but low in extraversion. Speculations about the apparent correlates of so-called mood congruence in healthy subjects are put forward and parallels are drawn with studies reporting the phenomenon in clinically depressed patients.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 117 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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