The Impact of Emotion and Sex on Fabrication and False Memory Formation

Kamilla Run Johannsdottir, Halldora Bjorg Rafnsdottir, Andri Haukstein Oddsson and Haukur Freyr Gylfason
Additional contact information
Kamilla Run Johannsdottir: Department of Psychology, Reykjavik University, 102 Reykjavik, Iceland
Halldora Bjorg Rafnsdottir: Department of Psychology, Reykjavik University, 102 Reykjavik, Iceland
Andri Haukstein Oddsson: Department of Psychology, Reykjavik University, 102 Reykjavik, Iceland
Haukur Freyr Gylfason: Department of Business, Reykjavik University, 102 Reykjavik, Iceland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-10

Abstract: The aim of the present study was to examine how negative emotion and sex affect self-generated errors as in fabrication set-up and later false recognition of those errors. In total, 120 university students volunteered to take part in the study. Participants were assigned at random into two equal sized groups (N = 60) depending on the type of event they received (negative emotional or neutral). We expected that fabrication and false recognition would be enhanced for the emotional event compared to the neutral one. We further hypothesized that both the willingness to fabricate and later false recognition would be enhanced for women compared with men. The results partly confirmed the hypotheses. The results showed that emotional valence (negative) affects both the willingness to fabricate about events that never took place, and the recognition of the fabrication as true at a later point. Women and men were equally likely to fabricate but women were more likely to recognize their fabrication, particularly for the emotional event. The results are discussed in the context of prior work.

Keywords: false memory formation; fabrication; self-generated errors; sex differences; emotional stimuli (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12185/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12185/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:22:p:12185-:d:683755

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().