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Memory for feelings is subject to fading and bias over time. In 2 studies, the authors examined whether the magnitude and direction of bias depend on the type of feeling being recalled: emotion or mood. A few days after the U.S. Presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, participants reported how they felt about the election outcome (emotion) and how they felt in general (mood). A month after the elections, participants recalled their feelings. The intensity of past emotion was recalled more accurately than the intensity of past mood. Participants underestimated the intensity of emotion but overestimated the intensity of mood. Participants' appraisals of the importance of the election, which diminished over time, contributed to underestimating the intensity of emotion. In contrast, participants' strong emotional response to the election contributed to overestimating the intensity of mood. These opposing biases have important implications for decision making and clinical assessment.

In their comment on our article on affective forecasting (Levine, Lench, Kaplan, & Safer, 2012), Wilson and Gilbert (2013) criticized the meta-analysis, proposed alternative explanations for the empirical studies, and concluded that the impact bias is alive and well. Our reply demonstrates that, irrespective of the exclusion of effects and selective recoding of effects recommended for the meta-analysis, the pattern of results remains the same: Study participants' forecasts are more accurate when they report their feelings about a focal event, or immediately after a focal event, than when they report their feelings in general after a delay. New analyses rule out individual differences and focalism as alternative explanations for the results of our empirical studies. These studies show that people can accurately predict the intensity of their feelings about events. People overestimate in predicting the impact of events on their emotional state in general, but clarifying the meaning of the forecasting question reduces the magnitude of this bias. We conclude that the impact bias, which encompasses overestimating the intensity of feelings about events and overestimating the intensity of feelings in general, is both dead and alive. The importance of predicting feelings about events for decision making and the reasons people predict some features of emotion more accurately than others are discussed.

This is a prospective longitudinal study examining recollections of suicidal content and correlates of accurate and inaccurate recollection. A primarily at-risk group of young adults (N = 78) who were initially assessed for suicidal ideation and behavior in adolescence, were asked to recall whether they had reported suicidal ideation or behavior about six years earlier. In recalling the previous interview, the majority of the participants provided consistent reports. However, with regard to those who had previously reported suicidal ideation or behavior, 38% failed to recall prior adolescent suicidal reports. Those who provided accurate reports of prior suicidal content were more symptomatic and were functioning more poorly than those who failed to recall past suicidal content. The implications for clinical assessment practices, research, and theory development are discussed.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00623.x Byline: Richard A. Wise (1,2), Martin A. Safer ([dagger]) Abstract: We compared what 160 U.S. judges, 57 law students, and 121 undergraduates know and believe about factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Judges were no more knowledgeable than were undergraduates, and both groups were less knowledgeable than were law students. For all 3 groups, increased knowledge of eyewitness factors was associated with beliefs that might reduce wrongful convictions. Participants in all 3 groups underestimated what potential jurors know about eyewitness testimony. The results suggest that increasing judges' knowledge of eyewitness testimony might help them to reduce wrongful convictions and to more accurately assess when eyewitness experts are needed. The results also suggest that law schools need to do a better job of educating law students about eyewitness testimony. Author Affiliation: (*)University of North Dakota ([dagger])Catholic University of America Article note: (2) Richard Wise, Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Corwin-Larimore, 319 Harvard Street Stop 8380, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8380. E-mail: richard.wise@und.nodak.edu

This is a prospective longitudinal study examining recollections of suicidal content and correlates of accurate and inaccurate recollection. A primarily at-risk group of young adults (N = 78) who were initially assessed for suicidal ideation and behavior in adolescence, were asked to recall whether they had reported suicidal ideation or behavior about six years earlier. In recalling the previous interview, the majority of the participants provided consistent reports. However, with regard to those who had previously reported suicidal ideation or behavior, 38% failed to recall prior adolescent suicidal reports. Those who provided accurate reports of prior suicidal content were more symptomatic and were functioning more poorly than those who failed to recall past suicidal content. The implications for clinical assessment practices, research, and theory development are discussed.

In Experiment 1, 133 college student volunteers watched a rock music video with or without suicidal content and then completed written measures assessing mood, priming of suicide-related thoughts, perceptions of personal risk, sensitivity to suicidality in others, and attitudes/beliefs about suicide. In Experiment 2, 104 college student volunteers listened to rock music with either suicidal or neutral content and then completed measures similar to Experiment 1, with the addition of a hopelessness measure. In both experiments, participants exposed to suicidal content wrote more scenarios with suicide-related themes in a projective storytelling task than those exposed to nonsuicidal content. However, there were virtually no group differences on explicit measures of affect, attitudes, and perceptions. Music and videos with suicide content appeared to prime implicit cognitions related to suicide but did not affect variables associated with increased suicide risk.

Undergraduates (N = 189) rated their test anxiety and emotions immediately before a midterm examination and recalled those feelings 1 week later. Students who learned they had done well on the exam underestimated, and those who learned they had done poorly overestimated, pre-exam test anxiety. Personality traits and emotional states together predicted memory distortion. Specifically, traits predicted the intensity of pre-exam states, such as test anxiety, which in turn predicted later distortion in recalling pre-exam negative and positive emotions. Also, students with positive personality traits were particularly likely to be influenced by current feelings when recalling test anxiety. Overestimating pre-midterm test anxiety predicted intentions to study more as well as feelings of unpleasantness just prior to the final exam.

We investigated whether enhanced jury instructions, which added empirical findings about confession evidence to standard jury instructions, could sensitize mock jurors to the confession evidence in a criminal trial transcript. Participants (N = 314) read a detailed transcript of a simulated murder trial, followed by standard or enhanced jury instructions. The key evidence was the defendant's recanted confession, gathered by police using either coercive (weak case) or appropriate (strong case) tactics. For example, testimony in the weak case, but not the strong case, indicated that the suspect was likely intoxicated when interviewed, and that the police likely lied about the evidence against him and hinted at leniency if he confessed. Participants in the enhanced instruction groups rated the likelihood that the defendant killed the victim as significantly higher in the strong case than the weak case, and they were also significantly more likely to find the defendant guilty in the strong case. In contrast, participants in the standard instruction groups did not differ significantly in either rated likelihood of killing or verdict for the two cases. The results demonstrate that instructions can make jurors sensitive to the strength of confession evidence, rather than merely skeptical about confession evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 90 undergraduates watched a videotape that portrayed a burglar breaking into a home and shooting three innocent victims. The 2-min tape contained 47 important violent and nonviolent details. Subjects recalled increasingly more details on each of four successive recall trials, including a trial 48 hr after seeing the tape. Instructions to use context or emotion as retrieval cues did not affect recall gains, and the gains were not the result of increased guessing. We conclude that eyewitness accounts may become more accurate with repeated attempts to recall information. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A life-threatening traumatic experience can cause physical and psychological distress, but it can also be remembered with pride from having demonstrated one's courage and abilities under severe circumstances. Characteristics of the event, early response, as well as later personal reflection, together determine the individual's response to a traumatic event. We investigated how traumatic combat experiences and retrospective appraisals of those experiences affected reports of symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression in 324 U.S. Army medics. Higher levels of combat experiences were associated with both appraisals of threat to life (r = .40) and appraisals of personal benefit of the deployment (r = .15). Threat appraisals were associated with increases (r = .33 and .29), whereas benefit appraisals were associated with decreases (r = -.28 and -.30, respectfully), in symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression. These opposing mediation pathways led to weak or nonsignificant total effects, which concealed the effects of combat intensity on posttraumatic stress (R(2) = .28) and depression (R(2) = .24). Acknowledging the beneficial effects that a combat experience had on one's life was associated with less intense behavioral health symptoms and offset the detrimental effects of traumatic combat experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]