SUBJECTIVE THEORIES ABOUT ENCODING MAY INFLUENCE RECOGNITION - JUDGMENTAL REGULATION IN HUMAN-MEMORY

In this present article, we demonstrate that the mechanisms of judgmen tal correction apply to situations of social judgments as well as to p sychological tasks in which judgmental components are not apparent. Pa rticularly, it has been shown in previous experiments (Strack & Bless, 1994) that in a basic recognition task, subjects were more likely to use the absence of a recollective experience to decide if a test stimu lus was new if they had reason to believe that they would have had suc h an experience had the stimulus been presented. In our study, subject ive theories about the memorability of different stimuli were experime ntally induced. Before subjects had to study word lists with and witho ut music, they were told that background music may facilitate or inhib it their learning. The results of a subsequent recognition task reveal ed that subjects who were led to believe that music would inhibit thei r learning more often rejected items of the learning list associated w ith music, in contrast to the learning list not associated with music. These findings suggest that subjective theories about one's own psych ological functioning may be used to regulate or correct judgments in b asic psychological domains such as memory.