Last year, my AP Biology exam was scheduled for 8:00 AM on a Monday morning. Around this time, I was incredibly sick, I was having problems with a close friend, and I had just broken up with a boyfriend. I woke up late on the morning of my exam. Luckily, I was able to get into the classroom before 8:00 AM. By the time I got to the school, I looked and felt completely terrible. I was in the worst mood. I ended up basically failing the exam. I do not think that it was because of my lack of knowledge of the material. I had an A in the class. I was very confident that I knew the subject. My poor test score was only because of the given circumstances around that time that put me in a bad mood. The majority of the time that I was studying for the exam, I was in a great mood. I was doing great in my classes, my relationships were intact, and I was healthy. This is an example of mood-dependent memory.

Mood-dependent memory was researched by Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe. They found that people perform better on assessments when their moods are similar when they study AND when they take the test. When we encode information, we associate it with the current emotional state we are in. If our mood changes when it is time to recall the information, it is harder to remember. We can’t bring those memories back as efficiently because we don’t feel the same way anymore. On the other hand, if our mood stays consistent, it is easier to recall information because we are still in the same state of mind. This is why I was unable to perform well on my AP Biology exam; I was in a positive mood when I was studying and a negative mood when I actually took the exam.