Mood Congruent Memory Bias

In 1981, cognitive psychologist Gordon H. Bower at Stanford University published "Mood and Memory" in American Psychologist, a landmark paper that gave the phenomenon its empirical foundation. Bower induced happy or sad moods in subjects through hypnotic suggestion, then tested recall of word lists and diary entries — finding in each case that people remembered more material that matched their current emotional state. Earlier clinical observations of depressed patients had hinted at the pattern, but Bower's controlled experiments transformed it into a named, testable cognitive bias.