An experiment was performed to compare recall for pleasant and unpleasant words. Recall for pleasant words was expected to be higher. Two lists each of 20 words were prepared. One list consisted of words rated as being pleasant; the other of words rated as unpleasant. The two lists were matched in terms of the frequency, concreteness, and meaningfulness of the words. One group of 10 participants was exposed to the list of pleasant words, another group of 10 participants received the list of unpleasant words. The number of words recalled by each participant in a free recall test was recorded.