The current study aims to further explore the relationship between musically evoked emotional states and recognition capabilities. Previous research has demonstrated emotional congruency between musical stimuli and subsequent task performance (Mitterschiffthaler et al., 2007). The background music’s emotional valence provides additional insight into how to guide the perception of events and how music-evoked emotions can impact memory (Scherer & Zentner, 2001; Hanser et al., 2015). For instance, happy people will have an easier time remembering positive experiences, rather than sad, or negatively valanced ones while those who are sad will better remember negative experiences, rather than happy, or positively valanced ones (Mayer et al., 1995). The current study consisted of 46 participants, recruited from Belmont Introductory Psychology courses. We hypothesized that participants who are induced to a positive emotional state will rate images more positively, while those in negative states will do the opposite. Additionally, we hypothesized that the recognition accuracy of positively valanced images will be higher for the positive group compared to the negative one, and vice versa. The implication of this study allows us to further understand the interplay of different factors, such as emotional states, and cognitive functioning. Results and discussion are forthcoming
