Negative Emotion Reduces Visual Working Memory Recall Variability: A Meta-analytical Review
Negative emotion is often hypothesized to trigger a more deliberate processing mode.This effect can manifest as increased precision of information maintained in working memory (WM) captured by reduced WM recall variability. However, some recent evidence shows that WM representations are immune to any emotional influences. Here, we meta-analyze existing evidence based on data from 13 experiments across 491 participants who performed a delay estimation WM task under negative and neutral emotions. We find that negative emotion modestly reduces WM recall variability and increases recall failures relative to the neutral condition. These effects are moderated by participants’ self-report negative experiences during emotion induction. Collectively, these data suggest that negative emotion influences how muchand how well one can remember in WM.