An experimental approach to training mood for resilience

According to influential theories about mood, exposure to environments characterized by specific patterns of punishments and rewards could shape mood response to future stimuli. This raises the intriguing possibility that mood could be trained by exposure to controlled environments. The aim of the present study is to investigate experimental settings that increase resilience of mood to negative stimuli. We developed a new task where participants register their mood when rewards are added or subtracted from their score. We examined sixteen experimental environments with different mood-reward relationships. In an exploratory experiment, we identified environments that produce the greatest improvements in mood resilience, as measured by decreased sensitivity to loss. In a next step, we replicated our results around mood training and tested mood’s resilience over time in a novel sample. We found that training effects are detectable and remain significant after multiple task rounds (approximately two minutes). These findings are a first step in our effort to better understand the mechanisms behind mood training and its potential clinical utility.