Experiment 2: The Mood Congruency Effect

Materials:

 A list of positive and negative words

 A mood questionnaire

Procedure:

1. Administer the mood questionnaire to participants to assess their current mood.

2. Randomly assign participants to either the positive or negative mood priming condition.
3. Present the list of words to participants one at a time and ask them to judge whether each word is
positive or negative as quickly as possible.
4. Record the time it takes each participant to complete the task.

Hypothesis:

Participants in the positive mood priming condition will be faster to judge positive words as positive
than negative words, and participants in the negative mood priming condition will be faster to judge
negative words as negative than positive words. This is known as the mood congruency effect.

Results:

If the hypothesis is supported, participants in the positive mood priming condition will have a
shorter average reaction time for positive words than for negative words, and participants in the
negative mood priming condition will have a shorter average reaction time for negative words than
for positive words.

Discussion:

The mood congruency effect is a well-known phenomenon in cognitive psychology. It is thought to

be due to the fact that our current mood biases our attention and processing of information.

These are just a few examples of simple experimental psychology experiments that do not need a
lot of materials. There are many other possibilities, and the specific experiment you choose will
depend on your research interests and resources.