Predicted and remembered emotion: tomorrow’s vividness trumps yesterday’s accuracy. Linda J. Levine et al. Memory, Nov 23 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1693598
ABSTRACT: People rely on predicted and remembered emotion to guide important decisions. But how much can they trust their mental representations of emotion to be accurate, and how much do they trust them? In this investigation, participants (N = 957) reported their predicted, experienced, and remembered emotional response to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They also reported how accurate and vivid they perceived their predictions and memories to be, and the importance of the election. Participants remembered their emotional responses more accurately than they predicted them. But, strikingly, they perceived their predictions to be more accurate than their memories. This perception was explained by the greater importance and vividness of anticipated versus remembered experience. We also assessed whether individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory for personal and public events (N = 33) showed superior ability to predict or remember their emotional responses to events. They did not and, even for this group, predicting emotion was a more intense experience than remembering emotion. These findings reveal asymmetries in the phenomenological experience of predicting and remembering emotion. The vividness of predicted emotion serves as a powerful subjective signal of accuracy even when predictions turn out to be wrong.
KEYWORDS: Emotion, prediction, memory, phenomenology, Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory
Excerpts:
Similarities found between predicted and remembered emotion
Emotion predictions and memories were similar in two
notable ways. First, participants both predicted and
remembered the intensity of their feelings about Trump’s
election fairly accurately. Past research has also shown
high accuracy when people predict or remember the intensity
of their feelings about events (e.g., Doré et al., 2016;
Kaplan et al., 2016; Lench et al., 2019; Levine et al., 2012).
Far less accuracy is found when people predict or remember
their general emotional experience, a judgment that
encompasses multiple features of emotion including intensity,
duration, and mood (e.g., Wilson et al., 2000). Second,
participants’ perceptions of the accuracy of their predictions
and memories were strongly related to their vividness
but weakly related to their actual accuracy. The phenomenological
cues of vividness and fluency can render people
poor judges of how much they have learned and will
later remember (Benjamin et al., 1998; Kruger & Dunning,
1999). We found that vividness was not a particularly
reliable guide to the actual accuracy of predicted and
remembered emotion.
Remembered emotion is more trustworthy, predicted emotion is more trusted
Predicted and remembered emotion also differed in important
ways. Participants remembered their emotional
response to Trump’s victory more accurately than they predicted
it. They also perceived their memories to be more
detailed than their predictions. Bringing to mind past
experiences and imagining future ones both involve
drawing from a complex body of knowledge (Conway &
Loveday, 2015). However, imagining future experiences
requires more cognitive acrobatics, including extracting
details from past experiences and flexibly recombining
them into a novel experience (Schacter et al., 2012; Schacter
& Addis, 2007). To simulate how they would feel in the
future if Trump won the election, participants had to piece
together episodic memories of related past experiences
and draw on semantic knowledge and appraisals. In contrast,
episodic detail about their actual emotional response
to Trump’s victory was available to participants after the
election. This likely explains why participants remembered
their emotional experience more accurately than they predicted
it. Despite the greater accuracy of memory than prediction,
the main group of participants perceived their
predictions to be more accurate. They also perceived
their predictions to be more vivid than their memories,
even adjusting for the extremity of emotion predicted
and remembered. Specifically, compared to remembering
their feelings, participants perceived the experience of predicting
their feelings to be more intense, accompanied by a
greater sense of experiencing the event, and easier to bring
to mind.
Why did participants perceive predicted emotion to be
more accurate than remembered emotion when the
reverse was the case? Emotions likely evolved to motivate
action (Miloyan & Suddendorf, 2015). Future events can be
acted on and changed but past events cannot, so people
accommodate to them (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999;
Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). This inherent asymmetry endows
the future with greater importance than the past (Van
Boven & Caruso, 2015). Extending this view, we proposed
that the greater importance of future emotional experiences
makes predictions particularly vivid, rendering
people vulnerable to misjudging their accuracy. Consistent
with this proposal, participants viewed the outcome of the
2016 presidential election as more important when it was a
future possibility than a past certainty. Greater importance
was associated with perceiving representations of emotion
to be more accurate. Analyses of indirect effects further
showed that the association between greater importance
and perceived accuracy was fully explained by participants’
more vivid phenomenological experience when predicting
than remembering emotion. These findings suggest that
viewing an event as more important before it occurs
than afterwards imbues predicted emotion with greater
vividness than remembered emotion, which in turn is
linked to perceiving emotion predictions to be more accurate
than memories.
Researchers often use the term “vividness” to refer to
the clarity and detail of visual imagery when people
remember past experiences or imagine future ones (e.g.,
D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004; Rubin & Kozin,
1984). Retrospection is typically associated with greater
visual clarity and detail than prospection (e.g., Cole & Berntsen,
2016). However, phenomenological properties other
than detailed imagery contribute to the vividness of
mental representations (Habermas & Diel, 2013; Kensinger,
Addis, & Atapattu, 2011; Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007). For
example, a person’s memory of their recent drive to the
grocery store might be clear and detailed but lackluster.
A person’s memory of their recent near miss on the
freeway might lack clarity and detail but be vivid. Core features
of an experience can come to mind with ease, as if
they were happening in the moment, and accompanied
by intense emotion, even if a representation is not
especially detailed (Kensinger et al., 2011). In the current
investigation, these properties of ease, experiencing, and
intensity, rather than detail, characterised anticipated
emotion more than remembered emotion.
Factors associated with the accuracy of emotion predictions and memories
We also examined two factors that we expected to be
associated with greater accuracy in representations of
emotion. Past research shows that, as episodic memory
for emotion fades, people rely on their current semantic
appraisals of the emotion-eliciting event (e.g., “How good
or bad is this event for my goals?”) to reconstruct how
they must have felt. The more people’s appraisals change
over time, the less accurately they remember how they
felt (e.g., Kaplan et al., 2016; Levine, 1997; Robinson &
Clore, 2002). In the current investigation, greater stability
in participants’ appraisals of whether Trump’s election
was good for the country was associated with greater
accuracy in their memory for how they had felt. Extending
past research, greater stability in appraisals was also associated
with greater accuracy in predicting emotion. These
findings suggest that people draw on their semantic
appraisals of events both to remember how they felt in
the past and to simulate how they will feel in the future.
We also examined whether people with detailed and
accurate episodic memories of autobiographical experiences
were better than others at remembering or predicting
emotional responses to experiences. Individuals with
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory perform similarly
to controls on many standard cognitive tests (e.g.,
mental imagery, attention; LePort et al., 2017). They also
show similar susceptibility to memory bias when presented
with misleading post-event information (Patihis et al.,
2013). Thus, these individuals do not appear to encode personal
or public events in a unique way but they retain representations
of the events they experienced in greater
detail and for far longer than controls, suggesting unusually
efficient memory consolidation and retrieval
(LePort et al., 2012, 2016, 2017). Emotion is an important
part of autobiographical experience but memory for
emotion had never been tested in this group.
We found that participants with HSAM did not differ
from other participants in the accuracy with which they
predicted or remembered emotion. They also did not
differ from others in the perceived accuracy of emotion
predictions or memories, though they did perceive their
memories to be more detailed. Like the main group, participants
with HSAM found predicting emotion to be a more
intense experience than remembering emotion. Taken
together, these findings highlight differences between
remembering the “what”, “where”, and “when” of events
(Tulving, 2002), which individuals with HSAM do with extraordinary
accuracy and detail, and predicting or remembering
feelings about events. These findings again highlight
the important contribution of semantic appraisals to representation
of emotion. The consistency of semantic
appraisals (e.g., how good or bad is this outcome for my
goals) was associated with greater accuracy in representations
of emotion; having superior episodic memory for
events that may evoke emotion was not. The exceptional
abilities of individuals with HSAM do not appear to
extend to this type of semantic knowledge about the self.
Researchers have speculated that experiencing events
with heightened emotional intensity may be one mechanism
underlying the ability of individuals with HSAM to
retain details of autobiographical and public events
(McGaugh, 2017). However, HSAM participants did not
experience more intense emotion in response to the election
compared to the main group of participants at any
time point. These individuals also remember neutral information
more accurately than controls, such as conversations
about their day during a lab session the previous
week (LePort et al., 2017). Thus, heightened emotional
arousal is not likely to be a primary mechanism underlying
this group’s superior memory for autobiographical events.
In summary, superior memory for personal and public
events did not confer superior ability to predict or remember
emotion. These findings refine our understanding of
the abilities and limitations of a unique group, and
suggest that emotional intensity is not the mechanism
underlying their abilities. The findings also point to important
differences between remembering episodic details of
autobiographical events versus emotions, and underscore
the compelling nature of anticipated emotion.
The
central thrust of the current research was to (1) establish if sex
differences existing in jealousy manifestation upon the discovery of
infidelity-revealing social media (Snapchat) messages are reflective of
those found in the offline world and (2) to explore the extent to which
feelings of jealousy elicited by imagined infidelity discovered whilst
snooping on a partner’s Snapchat account differ depending on the
identity of the third party. Broad support for the evolutionary
psychological perspective was found as women reported more jealousy to
emotional than sexual infidelity and higher emotional jealousy overall
in comparison to males, whereas males reported higher jealousy to sexual
as opposed to emotional partner infidelity. No differences were
recorded however between men and women with regard to jealousy elicited
by sexual infidelity. The identity of the ‘other-person’ was also shown
to have a considerable bearing on reported jealousy and, once again,
intriguing sex differences were evident. Women experienced significantly
higher jealousy when the same-sex rival was a sibling than when the
rival was either a best friend or a stranger. Conversely, men reported
significantly lower imagined infidelity-elicited jealousy directed
towards their own brother than imagined infidelity-elicited jealousy
occurring between their partner and a same-sex stranger.
Firstly,
the current study augments a growing body of research showing modest
yet consistent sex differences in jealousy manifestation resulting from
the discovery of infidelity online with women showing more pronounced
emotional jealousy than sexual jealousy, and men more pronounced sexual
jealousy than emotional jealousy (Dunn and Billett 2018; Dunn and McLean 2015; Groothof et al. 2009; Guadagno and Sagarin 2010; Hudson et al. 2015; Muise et al. 2014). These findings are supportive of sex differences consistently reported in offline jealousy-evoking scenarios (Archer 1996; Cann et al. 2001; Cramer et al. 2001; Fernandez et al. 2007; Harris 2002; Harris and Christenfeld 1996; Pietrzak et al. 2002; Schützwohl 2005; Schützwohl and Koch 2004).
The findings also challenge the criticism that sex differences in
jealousy are only evident using a forced-choice paradigm. Just as in the
case of Bendixen et al. (2015),
sex differences in the current study were found using continuous
measures. In utilising Snapchat, this study has revealed that sex
differences in jealousy manifestation in response to partner infidelity
discovery are not restricted to text messages (Dunn and McLean 2015) or Facebook (Dunn and Billett 2018).
One hypothesis, however, ‘males will be significantly more jealous over
the sexual messages than females’, was not supported. A plausible
explanation for this is that society may have become more sexualised
over recent years (Gill 2012) and females have become more promiscuously inclined (Thornhill and Gangestad 2008) and more likely to engage in infidelity (Brand et al. 2007).
Possibly, the enhanced opportunity to engage in online infidelity has
resulted in both sexes becoming extra-vigilant of sexual betrayal. In a
similar vein, Klettke et al. (2014)
published a systematic literature review revealing no differences in
the prevalence of sexting behaviour between men and women.
One
unexpected finding relates to the fact that women were shown to be more
jealous by the thought of infidelity occurring between their partner
and their sister than between their partner and both their best friend
or with a stranger. Biegler and Kennair (2016)
found that when asked to list the relevance of traits either for their
own or their sisters’ idealised long-term partner even though they
agreed on the majority of traits, differences were reported.
Participants emphasised the importance of genetic fitness for their own
idealised partners compared to what they thought would be good for their
sister’s idealised partner, e.g. that their sister’s potential partners
would prioritise extended family members. Consequently, there would be
more direct rivalry between sisters for access to the best genetic mates
during ovulation and these evolved mechanisms of heightened jealousy
have filtered down to the modern technological world. In summary, the
current study found that female relatives appear to possess more actual
and genetic conflict than male relatives (Biegler and Kennair 2016) with sisters perhaps being more emotionally invested in each other than brothers (Fletcher et al. 2013).
One
finding of particular prominence and significance in the current study
is the fact that men were more tolerant of the distressing thought of
infidelity revealed by a Snapchat message between their partner and
their own brother than they were between their partner and a same-sex
stranger. This is in direct contradiction of previous research findings
showing that when invited to imagine partners having cheated,
participants evidenced significantly higher distress when the partner
infidelity was with a relative compared to a non-relative (Fisher et al.
2009). Kostic and Yadon (2014)
have argued that such higher distress may be explained by the fact that
this is related to greater feelings of closeness with genetically
related relatives. The current study differed in one prominent way from
these earlier studies in that the jealousy-evoking scenarios were
contextualised within a social media platform. The mitigation of
jealousy by genetic relatedness in this case could be explained once
again by adopting an evolutionary interpretation. Evolutionary
psychology, like all scientific movements is guided by and owes enormous
gratitude to the formulation and inception of key seminal theories.
Hamilton’s (1964a, b)
inclusive fitness theory is one such theory. Not only did the theory
solve the seemingly imponderable mystery of the existence of altruism in
nature, it also allowed researchers to construct and test intricate
hypotheses relating to a range of social behaviours. One key postulate
is that individuals should show greater selfish restraint, and behave
altruistically, when interacting with closer genetic relatives including
those who are not directly related, e.g. sibling’s offspring (Hamilton 1964a, b).
In support of the theory, countless studies have shown that in a social
context as genetic relatedness diminishes so does the degree of
altruism directed from the donor to the recipient (Essock-Vitale and
McGuire 1985; Burnstein et al. 1994; Korchmaros and Kenny 2008) with genetic relatedness being a strong predictor of subjective closeness (Stewart-Williams 2008).
Apparent concerns for inclusive fitness costs pertaining to infidelity
have been shown in a study where participants, regardless of their own
sex, expressed most distress by a brother’s partner’s sexual infidelity
and a sister’s partner’s emotional infidelity (Michalski et al. 2007).
In summary, the current study illustrates that Hamilton’s inclusive
fitness theory is still relevant today in the technological era of
‘Snapchat’ at least with regard to explaining male jealousy attenuation
to partner/sibling infidelity. After all, extra-pair copulation between a
man’s partner and a brother may still result nevertheless in
genetically related offspring enhancing that man’s inclusive fitness.
Before
concluding, it is worthwhile pointing out potential weaknesses in the
methodology of the study. Since the incorporation of scenario methods
into research pertaining to infidelity and jealousy, and in an attempt
to address challenges to the evolutionary position presented by authors
such as DeSteno and Salovey (1996),
researchers have repeatedly attempted to present sexual and emotional
infidelity scenarios as being mutually exclusive (Buss et al. 1999).
When constructing infidelity-revealing messages in a social media
context, it is difficult for example to create an emotional infidelity
scenario without at least hinting at the potential for future sexual
liaison and vice versa. In addition to emphasising message ‘ecological
validity’, future studies need to further disambiguate the two by for
example making it clear that sexual infidelity is restricted to sexual
cheating alone without any emotional involvement. For example, current
research in our laboratory uses wording contained within a message such
as ‘we both know our affair will only ever be sexual’ or ‘no-strings
attached’ sexual fun.
In conclusion and in
support of previous findings, it is argued that manifestly different
jealousy inclinations in both sexes evolved as they were advantageous
during the time of our EEA to help solve adaptive problems
differentially pertinent to each sex (Geher and Miller 2012; Hart 2010).
Moreover, the current study has provided evidence that sex differences
in jealousy extend farther than purely inclinations towards jealousy
type; there may also be sex differences in the extent to which
third-party identity evokes jealousy. Miscellaneous adaptations
pertaining to jealousy appear impervious to change in the current
technological age. With a current pandemic in social media–mediated,
jealousy-elicited infidelity, research utilising fictitious,
jealousy-evoking scenarios may help shed light on, and hopefully
mitigate, societal and personal problems associated with this
phenomenon.
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