We report 3 empirical studies that represent the first systematic attempt to explore the relationship between emotional and decisional forgiveness and intentional forgetting. On this basis, we propose a model that provides a credible explanation for the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting. Specifically, we propose that engaging in…

It has been debated whether working memory (WM) performance is modulated by the valence of the stimuli that are being processed. A recent meta-analysis revealed that at the behavioral level and in individuals without mental health problems, mean-level performance differences in WM tasks with neutral versus affective conditions are small to…

Contemporary theories of metacognitive monitoring propose that beliefs play a critical role in monitoring of learning. Even so, recent evidence suggests that beliefs are not always sufficient to impact people's monitoring. In seven experiments, we explored people's beliefs about the impact of mood and item valence on memory and whether people use…

Existing affect scales typically involve recognition of emotions from a predetermined emotion checklist. However, a recognition-based checklist may fail to capture sufficient breadth and specificity of an individual's recalled emotional experiences and may therefore miss emotions that frequently come to mind. More generally, how do recalled…

It is well established that visual working memory (WM) for face identity is enhanced when faces display threatening versus nonthreatening expressions. During social interaction, it is also important to bind person identity with location information in WM to remember who was where, but we lack a clear understanding of how emotional expression…

Three experiments examined the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and 2 different forms of cognitive conflict: stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) interference. Our goal was to test whether WMC's relation to conflict-task performance is mediated by stimulus-identification processes (captured by S-S conflict),…

The authors investigated the effects of valence and arousal on memory using a dual-process model that quantifies recollective and nonrecollective components of recall without relying on metacognitive judgments to separate them. The results showed that valenced words increased reconstruction (a component of nonrecollective retrieval) relative to…

The placebo effect is any outcome that is not attributed to a specific treatment but rather to an individual's mindset (Benson & Friedman, 1996). This phenomenon can extend beyond its typical use in pharmaceutical drugs to involve aspects of everyday life, such as the effect of sleep on cognitive functioning. In 2 studies examining whether…

People recall taboo words better than neutral words in many experimental contexts. The present rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiments demonstrated this taboo-superiority effect for immediate recall of mixed lists containing taboo and neutral words matched for familiarity, length, and category coherence. Under binding theory (MacKay et…