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Investigating the replicability and boundary conditions of the mnemonic advantage for disgust

ABSTRACT Research has demonstrated that people remember emotional information better than neutral information. However, such research has almost exclusively defined emotion in terms of valence and arousal. Discrete emotions may affect memory above and beyond such dimensions, with recent research indicating that disgusting information is better remembered than frightening information. We initially sought to determine whether participants are sensitive to the effects of discrete emotions when predicting their future memory performance. Participants in Experiment 1 were more confident in their memory for emotional (both frightening and disgusting) images relative to neutral images, but confidence did not differ between frightening and disgusting images. However, because we did not replicate the mnemonic advantage of disgust, subsequent experiments were concerned with testing the replicability of this effect. Because metamemorial judgments sometimes eliminate memory effects, participants in Experiment 2 did not make such judgments. Even so, the effect did not replicate. The disgust advantage was ultimately replicated in Experiment 3, where participants completed a secondary task at encoding. The disgust advantage is replicable but appears less robust than previously recognised. A single-paper meta-analysis indicated that the effect is more likely under divided attention, perhaps because the mechanisms which mediate disgust-memory are relatively automatic.