Source memory, wishful thinking, and emotion
| dc.contributor.author | Laffin, Chace | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Kruk, Richard (Psychology) | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Brosowsky, Nicholaus (Psychology) | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Leboe-McGowan, Jason | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-01-23T20:51:31Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-01-23T20:51:31Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-01-21 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2024-01-21T19:15:10Z | en_US |
| dc.degree.discipline | Psychology | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts (M.A.) | |
| dc.description.abstract | Wishful thinking has been shown to impact an individual’s ability to accurately source monitor (Gordon, Franklin, & Beck, 2005). In Gordon et al.’s (2005) study, participants studied a set of positive, negative, and neutral psychic predictions, with the origin of each attributed to one of two (fictional) psychics. Participants were informed that one of these psychics was reliable at predicting the future, whereas the other one was not reliable. During a later test phase, participants were again presented with the set of predictions presented in the study phase and were given the task of identifying the psychic previously identified as having made the prediction. Their key finding was that participants were biased to remember positive predictions as originating from the reliable psychic and negative predictions as originating from the unreliable psychic, reflecting a memory error arising from wishful thinking. The aim of this study was to replicate the wishful thinking bias seen in Gordon et al’s. (2005) study and add to the literature by seeing if one’s mood impacts this wishful thinking bias. By using updated stimuli that were properly valenced (Experiment 1), this study successfully replicated the wishful thinking bias on source memory (Experiment 2). Research has also shown that the valence of stimuli as well as the mood of an individual can impact their susceptibility to memory distortions. Mood induction in Experiment 4 was shown to be effective by establishing the effects of the induction procedure in experiment 3. Experiment 4 replicated the paradigm used in Experiment 2, but induced individuals’ mood state (positive or negative) either before or after encoding the predictions. Experiment 4 successfully replicated the findings of a wishful thinking bias on source monitoring accuracy, shown by Gordon et al. (2005) and Experiment 2, however there was no impact of an individual’s mood state on the accuracy of source monitoring or the wishful thinking bias. I discuss these results in reference to existing empirical findings and theoretical accounts of the contribution of mood and other affective factors to performance on source memory tasks. | |
| dc.description.note | May 2024 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/38005 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | Source Memory | |
| dc.subject | Wishful Thinking | |
| dc.subject | Mood Induction | |
| dc.subject | Source Monitoring | |
| dc.title | Source memory, wishful thinking, and emotion | |
| dc.type | master thesis | en_US |
| local.subject.manitoba | no | |
| oaire.awardTitle | Canada Graduate Scholarship - MAster (CGS-M) | |
| project.funder.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000155 | |
| project.funder.name | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada |