The most directly relevant evidence in favour of mood state‐dependent retention (SDR) has confounded matching of mood at learning and recall with matching of mood‐induction procedure. In this study 157 college students participated in a two (same vs. different mood at learning and free recall of neutral words) by two (same vs. different type of mood induction at learning and recall) experiment. Recall did not significantly differ among the groups. Use of neutral material might have precluded finding effects of mood on memory, but neutral material is optimal for separating mood SDR from mood‐congruent retr