Mood congruent memory in Dysphoria: The roles of state affect and cognitive style

Biases in incidental memory for self-referent adjectives and intentional memory were compared across nondysphoric (ND; n=48), experimentally induced dysphoric (EXP; n=49), and naturally dysphoric (NAT; n=48) individuals. Negative biases, “evenhandedness”, and positive biases were demonstrated among NAT, EXP and ND participants, respectively, in terms of incidental memory. Correlation analyses suggested that the effects of cognitive style (self-esteem, dysfunctional attitudes, and attributional style) are limited to negative stimuli. Memory for incidental positive stimuli was only predicted by state affect. Groups did not differ in performance on an intentional memory task. Implications for network and schema models of depression are explored.