Do Emotion Words Create More False Memories than Neutral Words?

Memory is inherently reconstructive, and emotional material significantly influences encoding and recall. This study examined how emotional valence (positive, negative, neutral) affects false memory formation in adolescents using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. 53 participants aged 14-18 completed an online recognition task with six DRM word lists presented as videos, followed by a 48-item recognition test. Results showed negative lists produced the highest false memory rates (M = 0.86), followed by positive (M = 0.74) and neutral (M = 0.69), while hit rates were highest for positive words (M = 0.78) and lowest for neutral (M = 0.47). Gender analysis revealed no significant differences. These findings demonstrate the influential role of emotional valence, particularly negative emotion, in shaping false memories, with implications for educational, legal, and media contexts.