Memory errors on emotional lures: Is it possible to mistake a positive stimulus for a negative one?

Abstract

This study examined whether it is possible for people to mistakenly recognise a stimulus of one emotional valence through exposure to stimuli with another emotional valence that share orthographical relatedness. Across three experiments, the recognition error rates for emotionally distinctive lures were lower than for nondistinctive ones. The reduction in memory errors generalises to different types of emotional distinctiveness: emotional lures from neutral words, neutral lures from emotional words, and lures that have opposite valence from the studied ones. However, emotionally distinctive lures were still prone to memory errors. Repeated exposure to orthographically related items resulted in higher recognition error rates than lures without such exposure. Implications for everyday memory are discussed.