The Personality Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire

About the Laboratory: • site home • people in the lab • list of laboratory publications • selected reprints

Overview of Selected Theoretical Work: personality as a scientific discipline • the Systems Framework for personality • personal intelligence • emotional intelligence •ethical commentary on the personality of public figures

Psychological Measures and Procedures: scales of mood,• mood-congruent judgment,• empathy, • meta-experience of mood, • personal intelligence • emotional intelligence • intellectual experience • and experimental procedures

Other Resources: links to documents, video and websites on personality • UNH Department of Psychology (New Window)

Experimental Procedures

Inductions for Four Moods: A Mood-Induction Procedure Using Guided Imagery with Music

Contents

The context regarding the mood induction
The strength of the induction
Copies of the induction

The Context for the Induction

Experimental work in mood and personality sometimes is assisted by being able to alter a person's mood in a short-term fashion.

Ethical approval is required in advance by research institutions (and this technique should not be used outside of such contexts).

The Strength of the Induction

The technique is comparable to watching a television or movie drama with music. The Guided Imagery with Music Procedure, used in cooperation with the research participant, can alter moods for a few minutes.

Copies of the Induction

The Induction involves presenting a series of guided-imagery vignettes to research participants to imagine, while they listen to mood-relevant music. Four parallel procedures exist for happiness, anger, fear, and sadness. The full procedure is reported in this article:

Mayer, J. D., Allen, J., & Beauregard, K. (1995). Mood inductions for four specific moods: procedure employing guided imagery vignettes with music. Journal of Mental Imagery, 19, 133-150

The vignettes themselves can be found here (Table 1 of the above article). The mood scale for assessing the four moods is here, or in this MS Word version, and finally, if helpful, researchers can e-mail the lab for mp3's of the muscial recording(s) you need.