Journal of Exlaedmental Psychology: General

1985, Vol. 114, No. 3, 388-391

Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0096-3445/85/$00.75

Asymmetry of Happiness and Sadness in Effects on Memory

in Normal College Students: Comment on Hasher,
Rose, Zacks, Sanft, and Doren
Alice M. Isen
The University of Maryland
A review of the research literature on the influence of affect on memory suggests
that, whereas induced happiness tends to facilitate the recall of positive material,
induced mild sadness often does not facilitate the recall of negative material
symmetrically. These results, thus, are compatible with those reported by Hasher,
Rose, Zacks, Sanft, & Doren (1985). They also suggest, however, that this recent
failure to observe effects of mild depression on recall should not be overgeneralized,
to conclude that affective states other than mild sadness also have negligible
effects on cognitive processes. Possible mediators of these and related phenomena
are discussed, as are some hypotheses regarding their potential relevance to the
understanding of clinical depression and the understanding of the cognitive
representation of various affective states.
A growing body of literature suggests that
positive affect, induced in a variety of ways,
tends to facilitate the recall of positive material
in memory. Most of these studies find that
positive affect at time of retrieval can cue
positive material in m e m o r y (e.g., Isen,
Shalker, Clark, & Karp, 1978; Laird, Wagener,
Halal, & Szegda, 1982; Nasby & Yando,
1982; Natale & Hantas, 1982; Riskind, 1983;
Teasdale & Fogarty, 1979; Teasdale & Russell,
1983; Teasdale, Taylor, & Fogarty, 1980); and
a few also find that positive affect at time of
encoding enhances recall of positive material
(e.g., Bower, Gilligan, & Montiero, 1981;
Nasby & Yando, 1982). In addition, other
studies have shown that under some circumstances positive affect can cue material learned
in a matching affective state (the state-dependent-learning effect; e.g., Bartlett, Burleson,
& Santrock, 1982; Bartlett & Santrock, 1979;
Bower, Montiero, & Gilligan, 1978). ~
Not all of the studies that find a facilitative

effect of happiness on m e m o r y for positive

material, however, report a symmetrical facilitative effect of mild depression or sadness
on m e m o r y for negative material in normal
persons. In fact, most of these studies, whether
reporting an encoding (sometimes called
"mood-congruent learning"), retrieval, or
state-dependent-learning effect, suggest that
sadness does not facilitate the recall of compatible material or does so to a lesser extent
than does comparable positive affect (e.g.,
Bartlett et al., 1982; Bartlett & Santrock,
1979; Isen et al., 1978; Nasby & Yando,
1982; Natale & Hantas, 1982; Riskind, 1983;
Teasdale & Fogarty, 1979; Teasdale et al.,
1980; see Isen, 1984, for a more complete
review of these findings).
Thus, the results reported by Hasher, Rose,
Zacks, Sanft, & Doren (1985) are compatible
with a relatively substantial body of literature
that fails to find facilitative effects of sadness
on memory for negative material (even when

This article was written while the author was a visiting

professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
The author wishesto thank Nehemia Geva, Mari Riess
Jones, and Robert Zajonc for their helpful commentson
the manuscript.
Requests for reprints may be sent to Alice M. Isen,
Department of Psychology,Universityof Maryland, Catonsville, Maryland 21228.

Most recently,Bower& Mayer(in press) have reported,

as had other researchers previously(e.g., lsen et al., 1978;
Laird et al., 1982; Nasby & Yando, 1982), failure to
obtain state-dependent-learning effectsof affect. However,
these results should not be taken as disconfirming the
more general suggestionthat affectcan influence memory
and cognitive processes (see Eich & Birnbaum, 1982;
Isen et al., 1978; and Isen, 1984, for a more detailed
discussion of this and related issues).

388

COMMENT ON HASHER, ROSE, ZACKS, SANFT, AND DOREN

observing an influence of other affective states

on recall of compatible material). This context
has several important implications beyond
this confirmation, however.
First, it suggests that these most recent
results should not be attributed to the difference between induced versus naturally occurring affective state, because many of the
studies reporting findings compatible with
those of Hasher et al. (1985) involved induced
states of sadness. Moreover, some of the affect
inductions used manipulations such as failure
on a computer game or the imagine-remember technique, which may avoid some or all
of the problems mentioned by Hasher et al.
(1985) as associated with affect induction.
Second, the larger context indicates that
one should not overgeneralize from the Hasher
et al. (1985) results to conclude that, overall,
mild variations of mood have no effect on
the performance or cognitive processes of
college students. Many studies show that happiness has a quite substantial and robust
effect on selective recall and other cognitive
processes; moreover, even other negative affect
states such as anger or severe depression may
differ from mild sadness in their cognitive
effects.
Understanding This Asymmetry
The larger body of literature, thus, indicates
that affects differ in their impact on cognition
and suggests that it might be important to
understand more about the nature and source
of these differences. Such differential effects
may sometimes be attributed to methodological aspects of the experiments--for example,
noncomparable materials or failure to induce
sadness. However, methodological interpretations do not seem sufficient for explaining
the growing literature reporting asymmetric
effects of positive and negative feelings. Most
studies that attempt to examine both happiness and sadness at once use parallel procedures and materials intended to induce positive and negative states of equivalent intensity
and to measure their effects equivalently.
Often manipulation checks indicate that the
induced sadness is as intense as the induced
happiness, and pretests confirm the comparability of the sets of stimulus materials. Yet
the effects of these states most often are not

389

parallel. If seemingly parallel procedures fail

to induce symmetrical states, or if equally
intense states of opposite sign fail to have
symmetrical effects on apparently equivalent
materials, then perhaps there is something
truly different about these states or their
cognitive effects. Thus, it may be useful to
consider briefly two substantive factors that
have been proposed to account for the asymmetry between happiness and sadness, one
motivational and one cognitive.
One motivational hypothesis that has been
suggested to understand the differential impact
of happy and sad feelings is that of positiveaffect maintenance and negative-affect repair.
This interpretation, grounded in the sociallearning theory principle of self-regulation,
suggests that, where possible, people try to
retain good feelings, but try to chase "the
blues" away. This is not to suggest any kind
of irrational "defense mechanism," but rather
a quite rational coping strategy. This idea can
account for the difference between happiness
and sadness in impact on memory, and it is
compatible with a great deal of experimental
evidence from a variety of other areas as well
(see Isen, 1984; Isen et al., 1978, for references). Looked at in this way, the asymmetry
between sadness and other affective states in
influence on memory implies that people
may be relatively more motivated, and able,
to eliminate sad feelings than other feelings.
There are some studies that do report
symmetrical effects of happiness and sadness
on cognition. For example, Bower and his
colleagues (e.g., Bower, 1981; Bower et al.,
1981), using hypnosis to induce affective state,
have reported encoding and state-dependentlearning effects of both happiness and sadness
(but, unlike many other investigators, no
retrieval effects of any kind of affect). However, these studies contain elements that render them compatible with the proposed selfregulation interpretation, despite their seemingly incompatible findings. In particular,
they used a technique of mood induction in
which hypnotized subjects were instructed to
maintain their induced affective states, both
positive and negative, at their initial levels of
intensity. This, then, represents an explicit
request that subjects not engage in moodrepair. It is perfectly reasonable that such
mood improvement processes should be less

390

ALICE M. ISEN

evident in the studies in which the experimenter asked subjects not to use them. Because of such instructions, hypnotized subjects might also have focused on mood-compatible elements to be memorized (in order
to help them comply). This might account
for not only the parallel effects of sadness
and happiness observed, but also the encoding
(mood-congruent learning) effect of sadness,
which also has been obtained under these
conditions but sometimes not with other
methods (e.g., Nasby & Yando, 1982, using
the imagine-remember technique of affect
induction, observed mood-congruent learning
effects of happiness and of anger, but failed
to find an effect of sadness).
In addition to a motivational interpretation
of the asymmetry in the cognitive effects of
happiness and sadness, it is also possible to
offer a cognitive interpretation. Specifically,
the schema or network of material associated
with sad affect normally may be structured
differently from that associated with happy.
(Note that network and spreading-activation
models are not being assumed here.) For
example, depressing material may come to
be less well elaborated and interconnected in
the cognitive system than positive, 2 possibly
as a result of habits of mood-repair. This
cognitive factor, then, may augment the motivational effects described earlier in producing
an attenuated effect of negative feelings. (In
the case of persons asked to maintain their
negative affective states, special effort may be
expended to encode and rehearse negative
material, in order to maintain the sad affective
state; and thus difficulty in the recall of
negative material may be overcome.) Moreover, because schemata of depressing material
may thus be relatively specific, attempts to
cue the depressing schema among normal
persons may have to relate to specific ideas
included in the schema rather than to just
anything negative. In contrast, positive schemata may be broader and therefore more
readily cued by a wide range of material.
Clinical Depression
This distinction proposed between the
schemata of happiness and sadness may not
hold true for depressed persons, however. It
is possible that severely depressed persons
may differ, either characteristically or tern-

porarily, from normals with regard to the

way in which negative material is organized
cognitively. This suggests that a useful approach to the study of depression may be to
attempt to identify the cognitive patterns that
may differentiate depressed individuals from
normals. That is, depression might be understood as inxiolving increased accessibility of
negative material and/or a more extensive or
elaborated or better connected network or
schema of negative material than characterizes
normal individuals or the normal state.
In normal persons, temporary depression
is usually thought to be "about" something.
It may be induced by events that cue specific,
related negative cognitive material; and the
depression may last as long as it takes for the
person to think about or cope with the event
and its associated ideas. This may be another
way of saying, as suggested earlier, that for
normals the cognitive material associated with
depression may be relatively specific or circumscribed. Thus it may not extend to include more general material, o f the type often
used in experiments on negative affect (e.g.,
negative words, negative stories unrelated to
the subject's own source of sadness); and for
this reason depressed or saddened normal
persons may not show improved access to
negative material, in experiments. However,
this same situation may not hold true for
depressive persons; and the reason may be
that characteristically their schema for sad
material may be extensive and well-integrated.
An alternative possibility for understanding
the difference between normal and depressed
persons is that intensity of negative affect,
rather than habitual pattern of associates to
negative affect, might be the differentiating
factor. This view would suggest that there
need not be any characteristic difference between normal and depressive persons, but
rather that the two groups might differ only
temporarily, in terms of the intensity of the
negative affect that they are experiencing at
a given time. Thus, it might be suggested that
intense sadness might cue a wider range of
2There is some evidenceconsistentwith this possibility
in the word-associationliterature, which suggeststhat the
pool of associates to negative words is relatively small
and that such associates are given with greater latency
(e.g., Cramer, 1968;PoUio, 1964).Of course, motivational
factors are not ruled out in most studies of word association.

COMMENT ON HASHER, ROSE, ZACKS, SANFT, AND DOREN

associates, as described earlier, a n d that studies
o f m i l d l y depressed o r s a d d e n e d n o r m a l persons d o n o t involve intense e n o u g h sadness
to observe a c u i n g effect t h a t extends to the
u n r e l a t e d m a t e r i a l s used in the studies.
These considerations i m p l y that the findings
o f researchers w o r k i n g with m i l d l y depressed
or s a d d e n e d college students m i g h t n o t speak
directly to o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f severe or
clinical depression. T h e y suggest that, alt h o u g h we d o learn m u c h b y studying the
effects o f m i l d e m o t i o n s in n o r m a l persons
a n d the coping processes o f n o r m a l s , research
to a d v a n c e o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f clinical
depression further m a y have to involve study
o f the clinically or severely depressed, as well.
Alternatively, if n o r m a l s are to be used, m a terials related m o r e specifically to their
d e p r e s s i o n or sadness m a y need to be used.
Thus, the failure to observe an effect o f m i l d
depression o n m e m o r y for u n r e l a t e d negative
m a t e r i a l in n o r m a l students m a y n o t h o l d
direct i m p l i c a t i o n s for cognitive or s c h e m a
theories o f clinical depression.
In s u m m a r y , the results r e p o r t e d by H a s h e r
et al. (1985) j o i n a growing b o d y o f literature
suggesting t h a t a m o n g n o r m a l persons m i l d
sadness, w h e t h e r i n d u c e d o r n a t u r a l l y occurring, m a y n o t facilitate the recall o f relatively
u n r e l a t e d negative m a t e r i a l in m e m o r y . This
finding in n o way u n d e r m i n e s the conclusion
that other m i l d affective states (e.g., happiness,
anger) can serve as retrieval cues for a relatively wide range o f c o m p a t i b l e m a t e r i a l in
m e m o r y a n d t h u s can play an i m p o r t a n t role
in m e m o r y a n d o t h e r cognitive processes.
This a s y m m e t r y in the effects o f h a p p i n e s s
a n d sadness suggests t h a t the cognitive repr e s e n t a t i o n o f different affect states m a y be
different, a n d / o r t h a t people n o r m a l l y m a y
cope with stimuli r a t h e r t h a n s i m p l y receive
their effects. A p p l i c a t i o n o f these findings to
the u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f e m o t i o n a l d i s t u r b a n c e ,
a n d to the u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the cognitive
r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a n d consequences o f various
affective states, are exciting possibilities for
c o n t i n u e d research.
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Received December 3, 1984
Revision received January 21, 1985