Abstract

This study investigates the impact of mood induction on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, focusing on emotional and neutral wordlists while controlling for executive functions and affective traits. Two experiments were conducted: the first involved validating Persian emotional and neutral DRM wordlists; the second examined how positive, negative, and neutral mood conditions influenced false memory rates for emotional and neutral stimuli. Participants (N = 91) were assigned to mood conditions using a random assignment process, with mood induced through validated music and images.   Results revealed significant differences in false memory rates across mood and task conditions. Negative emotional tasks elicited the highest false memory rates, while positive mood induction combined with positive emotional tasks resulted in the lowest rates. Interestingly, mood induction generally reduced false memory, with negative mood demonstrating the strongest effect. These findings challenge existing theories such as the affect-as-information hypothesis, highlighting the nuanced interplay between mood, emotional task load, and cognitive processing.   This research underscores the importance of considering both emotional and cognitive factors in understanding memory distortion, particularly in high-stakes contexts like forensic interviews. It further refines the DRM paradigm by integrating culturally validated emotional stimuli and controlling for individual differences.