The role of self-conscious emotions on inference generation

Abstract

Emotion may play a critical role in a reader's ability to comprehend text. Past research has shown that happy and sad emotions influence processing, which can impact comprehension. More specific emotions, such as self-conscious emotions, require a reader to allocate more cognitive resources to process those emotions. This study examines the effects of pride, shame, guilt, and neutral emotions on the reader's ability to generate planning knowledge and physical knowledge inferences. After an autobiographical memory task, participants read texts that require a planning knowledge or physical knowledge inference to be generated. Response times and accuracy rates for the inference generation task were examined. Though there was not a statistically significant effect of emotion found when examining accuracy rates for knowledge validating questions, the p-value was less than .10, and demonstrated that pride may facilitate general knowledge activation during reading.