Recognition memory for specific emotion words: anger, fear, and disgust

Negative emotional stimuli are typically recognized more accurately and with a more liberal response bias than neutral stimuli. We assessed whether those effects on recognition memory are present at similar magnitudes for specific negative emotions by contrasting emotions that theoretically vary across different emotional dimensions. Although anger, fear, and disgust are all highly-arousing and negative emotions, they differ in motivational tendencies and/or appraisal properties such as (un)certainty about the source or the consequence of emotion: Fear and disgust trigger avoidance motivation, whereas anger triggers approach motivation (Carver, C. S., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2009). Anger is an approach-related affect: evidence and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 183–204.). Also, anger and disgust are associated with high certainty, but fear is associated with low certainty (Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2000). Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgment and choice. Cognition & Emotion, 14(4), 473–493.). In two experiments, participants studied lists of negative (anger-, fear-, or disgust-related) and neutral words and then completed a delayed recognition memory test. In both experiments, fear-related words showed no recognition memory advantage compared to neutral words, while anger-related words were recognized less well than neutral words. Disgust-related words were better recognized than their neutral counterparts, but only when within-subject design was employed in Experiment 2. Therefore, neither effect could solely be attributed to the motivational or certainty-related properties of emotions. Across all of the specific emotions, negative words led to large liberal bias shifts in both experiments. Notably, this liberal bias was more pronounced for disgust-related words in Experiment 2. Overall, although motivational/appraisal differences across specific negative emotions affected recognition memory, these effects could not be exclusively attributed to a particular emotion dimension. Instead, these effects might be best understood through unique adaptive properties inherent to each specific emotion.