Both emotional and neutral contexts increase feeling of knowing judgments despite poorer memory

The noncriterial recollection hypothesis (Brewer, G. A., Marsh, R. L., Clark-Foos, A., & Meeks, J. T. (2010). Noncriterial recollection influences metacognitive monitoring and control processes. <i>Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology</i>, <i>63</i>(10), 1936-1942. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210903551638) posits that feeling-of-knowing judgments (FOKs) are influenced by the retrieval of learned contextual information, but the effects of emotional contexts remain unexplored. We examined how the amount and emotional content of contextual information affect FOKs. Participants studied face-name pairs presented alone (no-information), with a description of a disgusting/neutral behaviour (medium-information), or with both the person's profession and the disgusting/neutral behaviour (maximum-information). We assessed cued recall, FOKs, and recognition accuracy for the face-name pairs. We hypothesised that additional contextual information would increase FOK magnitude, with a more pronounced effect for emotional content. The results revealed a dissociation between memory and metamemory, indicating a metacognitive illusion. Medium and maximum information conditions increased FOKs but reduced recall and recognition rates relative to the no-information condition. We observed no direct effect of emotion; FOK magnitude did not differ between negative and neutral conditions across information levels. However, correctly identifying which faces were associated with disgusting behaviours contributed more to FOKs than identifying which faces were associated with neutral behaviours. Overall, this study supported the noncriterial recollection hypothesis and extends research on emotion and metamemory. Moreover, we show a memory-metamemory dissociation with stimuli relevant in everyday life.