Adamska, Konrad Johannes (2024) The Spreading Effects of Positive Emotion on Episodic Memory. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
The study tried to explore the effects of positive emotion on episodic memory, specifically how positive valence influences the associative strength and specificity of memory elements. Episodic memory is the memory of events, pertaining to where and when they took place and who and what was involved. While much research has focused on the impact of negative emotions on episodic memory, there is limited understanding of how positive emotions shape episodic memory. Leveraging social Pavlovian conditioning and an associative memory paradigm, participants were presented with events composed of four elements: a scene, an object, a face, and a phrase. The phrases were either neutral or positive in valence and were intended to share their valence through associations with the event they are part of. We hypothesized that events containing a positive phrase would show stronger associative memory while memory specificity pertaining to element details would be inhibited compared to the events containing a neutral phrase. We found no change in valence for the events and consequently no effects on episodic memory and were unable to draw conclusions to address our hypothesis, concluding that the manipulation of valence as done in this study was ineffective. However, based on the lack of results, several suggestions for improvements of the paradigm could be made pertaining both to the general structure and materials used in this study. Therefore, while not being able to utilize data towards answering our hypothesis, we were able to gain further insights into how one could possibly study effects of positive emotion on episodic memory in the future.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Nieuwenstein, M.R. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Sep 2024 08:42 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Sep 2024 08:42 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4347 |
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