Mood-congruent and Mood-dependent Memory
One commonly reported phenomenon is that when individuals are in a "bad mood", they typically recall more bad things having happened to them and evaluate episodes in their lives in a more negative way than usual. It has been suggested that this effect occurs because a person’s mood at any given time has a strong influence on which aspects of their environment seem most salient. This affects what they remember about the past, and what they encode about the present. This particular effect is referred to as mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory.
Read more about this topic: Context-dependent Memory
Famous quotes containing the word memory:
“Language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. Ill tell you what, sir, he said; the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sirseento be ever so faintly appreciated.... The infant phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same agenot perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years.”
—Charles Dickens (18121870)