How influenceable is our metamemory for pictorial material? The impact of framing and emotionality on metamemory judgments.

Metamemory refers to the ability to monitor and control one´s own memory processes which plays an important role in everyday life when accuracy of memory is required. The present study intends to give new insights into the complex relationship between confidence in memory and accuracy of metamemory judgments for negative emotional and neutral pictorial stimuli. Judgments of learning (JOLs) were investigated in order to provide important theoretical information for practical applications in everyday life. A balanced 2×2 factorial experimental design was used to explore the impact of framing in terms of remembering or forgetting as well as emotionality on JOLs. With respect to the already known complex relationship of confidence in memory and accuracy of confidence statements, the present results emphasize this complexity by showing that there is no interaction between the factors framing and emotionality but significant main effects of these two factors with respect to JOLs. Furthermore, accuracy of JOLs is not influenced by framing in terms of remembering and forgetting. Both framing conditions lead to overconfident judgments, regardless of whether confidence in memory is influenced by framing. Emotionality, on the other hand, enhances memory accuracy regardless of whether the subjective feeling of remembering influences confidence in memory or not. The present findings highlight the need to strengthen the collective consciousness about the influenceability of confidence in memory and the fact that a high confidence in memory is not inevitably accompanied by accurate memories.