When confidence is not accurate: Effects of emotionality on actual versus predicted memory performance

From recalling crimes to passing exams, memory is a critical cognitive function for effectively navigating everyday life. Often, we expect that we will remember what is emotionally significant to us, especially when those feelings are negative. However, past research has indicated that may not be the case. The goal of this study, which I helped conduct alongside my professor and fellow research assistants, was to investigate the relationship between memory accuracy and confidence in one’s own memory for emotionally negative words (such as "grief") as compared to neutral words (such as "graph"). We recruited 65 UM psychology students through SONA, who were instructed to study 64-word pairs. The pairs consisted of negative-negative; negative-neutral; neutral-negative; and neutral-neutral words (16 pairs for each). During the study phase, participants were also asked to provide their confidence rating (0 to 100% sure to recall) to indicate how likely they would be able to remember each word pair. Then, their memory was tested by being asked to provide the second word of a pair given the first word for each of the 64 pairs. We found the confidence rating was highest for negative-negative word pairs and lowest for neutral-neutral word pairs. However, memory accuracy was highest for neutral-neutral word pairs, whereas negative-negative word pairs landed third in accuracy. These results indicate that confidence may not be accurate in predicting actual memory performance, particularly when people rely too much on the emotionality of items to be remembered.