I know I’m happy, and I’m right: Metacognition of emotion
Abstract
Can we be metacognitively aware of our emotions? Individuals experience a variety of emotions every day. Yet no previous study has provided an experimentally quantitative index of the metacognition of emotion. The present study aims to resolve this issue. We utilized 20 pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) to induce positive emotions. Participants were instructed to perform a two-interval forced choice task in which they chose whether the first or the second picture presented made them produce a more positive emotion. We then computed the psychological distance of how positive these pictures were according to the law of comparative judgment (Thurstone, 1927). After viewing each picture again, participants were instructed to judge if the picture made them produce a positive emotion higher or lower than the median of all the pictures and rate their confidence in this judgment. The metacognition of emotion was quantified by the M-ratio (ratio of meta-d’ to d’) based on signal detection theory. The d’ (whether the induced emotion was higher or lower than the median) was positively correlated with the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire and negatively correlated with the Alexithymia Scale. These correlations verify that our paradigm indeed captures emotion production and not simply picture likability. Additionally, the M-ratio was significantly greater than zero, suggesting that individuals do have the ability to be metacognitively aware of their emotion production. Together, our results provide the first experimentally quantitative index of metacognition of emotion and further advance the understanding of awareness toward subjective feelings.
