Affective reactions when learning that our answer is biased: The role of negative feedback in the arousal of epistemic emotions

This study investigated how different types of feedback influence emotional reactions in decision-making tasks involving high-confidence errors. The sample consisted of 596 undergraduate and postgraduate university students. Participants completed tasks and received either low informative feedback (indicating correctness) or high informative feedback (offering detailed explanations of correct answers). They reported their confidence levels and epistemic emotions of surprise, confusion, and curiosity. Participants reported epistemic emotions after each type of feedback. The results showed that confidence ratings did not differ between correct and incorrect answers. Incorrect answers elicited higher levels of surprise, curiosity, and confusion than correct answers. High informative feedback significantly reduced epistemic emotions, especially confusion, compared to low informative feedback. These results highlight the importance of detailed feedback in shaping epistemic emotions and enhancing learning in problem-solving contexts. Implications for research and teaching practices are discussed.