Variables influencing cognitive and affective reactions to a musical mood-induction procedure

This study differs from the typical mood-induction procedure (MIP) by addressing individual differences in susceptibility to the effects of a negative mood induction. The main purpose of the present study was to assess the extent to which depression, optimism, pessimism, introversion-extraversion, neuroticism, affect intensity, and sex predict the effects of a negative musical MIP on changes in affect and cognition. The variables investigated, excluding optimism and pessimism, have been implicated as potential predictors of the effectiveness of various MIPs, but in no experiment have their combined effects been studied, nor have the dependent measures employed to tap changes in affect and cognition been included in any single experiment. It was hypothesized that susceptibility to the negative MIP, as reflected by increases in negative affect and negative automatic thoughts and by decreases in positive affect and positive automatic thoughts, would be correlated positively with depression, pessimism, neuroticism, and affect intensity and negatively with optimism and introversion. It was also hypothesized that women would be more susceptible than men to the negative MIP. The intercorrelations among these variables were examined as a secondary goal.;According to Manova and Anova, the negative MIP effectively and appropriately produced the intended changes in both affect and cognition for both men (n = 103) and women (n = 123) undergraduates. No sex main effect was found. The zero-order correlational results partially supported the hypotheses for neuroticism, depression, introversion, and affect intensity. Neuroticism, depression, and affect intensity correlated with increase in negative automatic thoughts, and introversion correlated with decrease in positive affect and positive automatic thoughts, although the magnitude of those relationships was small. Moreover, when results were analyzed separately for men and women, significant correlations, with one exception, were confined to the women subjects. For women, neuroticism correlated with increases in negative affect and negative automatic thoughts, and depression correlated with an increase in negative automatic thoughts. For men, pessimism correlated with a decrease in automatic positive thoughts. Although the zero-order correlational analyses provided partial support for the hypotheses, according to multiple regression analyses only neuroticism emerged as a predictor for increase in negative automatic thoughts. These results support the hypothesis that neuroticism predicts susceptibility to the effects of a negative MIP, via increasing levels of negative automatic thoughts. Moreover, when multiple regression analyses were performed separately for men and women, only for women was neuroticism a predictor. The women subjects appear to account for the significance of neuroticism as a predictor of increase in negative automatic thoughts. In addition, the intercorrelations among the predictor variables emerged as expected.