Memory and metamemory for social interactions: Evidence for a metamemory expectancy illusion.

Memory and metamemory for social interactions: Evidence for a metamemory expectancy illusion. Mem Cognit. 2020 Jul 30;: Authors: Mieth L, Schaper ML, Kuhlmann BG, Bell R Abstract People do not always have accurate metacognitive awareness of the conditions that lead to good source memory. In Experiment 1, participants studied words referring to bathroom and kitchen items that were either paired with an expected or unexpected room as the source. Participants provided judgments of item and source learning after each item-source pair. In line with previous studies, participants incorrectly predicted their memory to be better for expected than for unexpected sources. Here, we show that this metamemory expectancy illusion generalizes to socially relevant stimuli. In Experiment 2, participants played a prisoner's dilemma game with trustworthy-looking and untrustworthy-looking partners who either cooperated or cheated. After each round of the game, participants provided metamemory judgments about how well they were going to remember the partner's face and behavior. On average, participants predicted their source memory to be better for behaviors that were expected based on the facial appearances of the partners. This stands in contrast to the established finding that veridical source memory is better for unexpected than expected information. Asking participants to provide metamemory judgments at encoding selectively enhanced source memory fo...
Source: Memory and Cognition - Category: Neuroscience Tags: Mem Cognit Source Type: research