Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

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Consciousness and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Emotion as a boost to metacognition: How worry enhances

the quality of condence
Sbastien Massoni
QuBE School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 26 February 2014
Available online 3 October 2014
Keywords:
Condence
Metacognition
Emotion
Worry
Motivation
Attention
Reaction time

a b s t r a c t
Emotion and cognition are known to interact during human decision processes. In this
study we focus on a specic kind of cognition, namely metacognition. Our experiment
induces a negative emotion, worry, during a perceptual task. In a numerosity task subjects
have to make a two alternative forced choice and then reveal their condence in this decision. We measure metacognition in terms of discrimination and calibration abilities. Our
results show that metacognition, but not choice, is affected by the level of worry anticipated before the decision. Under worry individuals tend to have better metacognition in
terms of the two measures. Furthermore understanding the formation of condence is better explained with taking into account the level of worry in the model. This study shows
the importance of an emotional component in the formation and the quality of the subjective probabilities.
2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
How humans combine emotion and cognition during their decision process is a central question in the behavior sciences.
The initial philosophical dissociation between rational and emotional decision (Plato, Descartes, and Kant) has been superseded by a view in which emotions are integrated in the decision process. Emotions are an important component of the decision and are useful to make accurate judgments (Damiaso, 1994; LeDoux, 1996). In this study we will focus on a specic
aspect of cognition: metacognition, i.e. the knowledge an individual has about his own cognition. How emotion interacts
with this specic kind of cognition is for the moment an open question.
Recent studies have focused on inter-subject and inter-task variation in metacognition (Fleming, Weil, Nagy, Dolan, &
Rees, 2010; Song et al., 2011; McCurdy et al., 2013) but none have examined how metacognition could be affected by internal
processes such as emotions. The only exception that we are aware is Garnkel et al. (2013) who show that the level of metacognition in a memory task is modulated by the timing of the stimulus with respect to the phase of the heartbeat. This result
conrms the idea of the present study: the internal processes may have an effect on the metacognition. Here we want to
characterizes this effect and shows that metacognition is improved by the emotional valence of the decision.
We measure metacognition via two different abilities: calibration (or bias) reveals how close condence judgments are on
average to real success (Harvey, 1997) and metacognitive accuracy refers to the discrimination (or resolution) of how
variations of condence match the variation of performances (Fleming & Dolan, 2012). A potential relationship between

Address: School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, QUT Gardens Point Z Block Level 8 Ofce Z833, 2 George St.,
Brisbane City, QLD 4000, Australia.
E-mail address: sebastien.massoni@gmail.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.08.006
1053-8100/ 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

metacognition and emotion is hypothesized at the light of advances on the neural basis of condence judgments. Recent
studies show that metacognition is associated with activity in the anterolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) (Yokoyama &
et al., 2010 using a short-memory task) and the lateral PFC (Fleming, Huijgen, & Dolan, 2012; Fleming et al., 2010;
Rounis, Maniscalco, Rothwell, Passingham, & Lau, 2010 using a perceptual task). Emotions have been more extensively studied and robust evidence has been found in favor of a central role of the orbitofrontal cortex (Bechara, Damasio, & Damiaso,
2000) and the amygdala (Seymour & Dolan, 2008) in the emotional part of decision-making. Nevertheless, some studies document a network of brain area activated during the cognitive emotional integration rather than specic area for the two
aspects (Pessoa, 2008) and this integration of emotions in cognition may occur in lateral PFC (Gray, Braver, & Raichle, 2002).
This view gives support to the existence of an emotional effect on the metacognitive abilities. A more intuitive way of thinking about the link between emotion and metacognition is provide by the attentional effect of emotion. The affective significance of a stimulus is known to induce changes in sensory processing and attention (Vuilleumier, 2005; Yiend, 2010).
Negative emotions, such as anxiety and worry, are generally associated with a decrease in attentional control (Eysenck,
Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007) and dysregulation of attentional focus (Bishop, 2008). Nevertheless a differentiation
between the effects of state and trait anxiety (Pacheco-Unguetti, Acosta, Callejas, & Lupianez, 2010) gives support to a potential positive impact of stated worry on metacognition by increased willingness to (over)control information. This tendency to
over-react under worry could have a positive impact on the quality of metacognition with the use of more precise rating
strategies and thus better discrimination ability. We might also expect better calibration with a diminishing of the overcondence by a depressive effect.
Our experimental design induces emotions by framing effects. We use loss vs. gain and high vs. low stake frames to generate variations on the self-reported level of worry of subjects. Loss aversion is the tendency to weight loses greater than
equivalent gains in decision-making (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Recently this well documented bias has been studied with
the help of neuronal data and there is evidence that loss aversion could be linked to emotional interactions on the cognitive
process (see Takahashi, 2013). Indeed De Martino, Kumaran, Seymour, and Dolan (2006), De Martino, Camerer, and Adolphs
(2010) found an activation of the amygdala in the case of loss frame. Even if another fMRI study (Tom, Fox, Trepel, &
Poldrack, 2007) was not able to replicate this nding (they found activation of the lateral PFC and the striatum), there exists
evidence for an emotional aspect for loss choices compared to gains (Sokol-Hessner, Camerer, & Phelps, 2013; Sokol-Hessner
et al., 2009, conrm this hypothesis using physiological and fMRI measures). Thus using a loss vs. gain frame in an experiment should induce variations in the worry felt by subjects facing their choices. We also use a high stake vs. low stake frame
to increase the variations of the stated level of worry. High stake decisions are known to be more emotionally demanding
than low stake cases (see Kunreuther & et al., 2002, for a review of high stakes decision making). Overall we can expect
to succeed in inducing some variations of a negative emotion that will be measured in terms of a worry scale. We dene
worry as a cognitive phenomenon [. . .] concerned with future events where there is uncertainty about the outcome, the
future being thought about is a negative one, and this is accompanied by feeling of anxiety (MacLeod, Williams, &
Bekerian, 1991 p. 478). This approach focuses on the central role of uncertainty (Dugas, Gosselin, & Ladouceur, 2001)
and makes sense in our design where the outcomes are uncertain and may be negative with important losses. The inuence
of anxiety on decision-making is well-studied (Hartley & Phelphs, 2012) but it remains unclear that worry leads always to
worse decisions. As our design is not based on cognitive tasks but perceptual ones with emotionally neutral stimuli (but worrying frames), we expect to nd a positive effect of worry on metacognition due to an increase of energy and attentional
effort. We assume that metacognition will be improved when subjects reveal their condence after making a decision under
a worried mood. This assumption that worse mood leads to better metacognition is also supported by results from neuropsychiatric disorders studies. Metacognition, dened as insight or awareness of illness, is improved by negative moods
(David, Bedford, Wiffen, & Gilleen, 2012). We can hypothesize that this link is also valid for healthy individuals and thus that
metacognition is improved by worried mood.
2. Methods
2.1. Participants
The experiment was conducted in May and July 2012 at the Laboratory of Experimental Economics in Paris (LEEP) of the
University of Paris 1. Subjects were recruited by standard procedure in the LEEP database and gave written informed consent
to take part in the experiment. 103 healthy subjects (54 men; age 1838 years, mean age, 22.9 years, most enrolled as undergraduate students at the University of Paris) participated in this experiment for pay. The sessions lasted around 120 min and
subjects were paid on average 27.1. We excluded 6 subjects from analysis due to insufcient variation (s.d. < 0.03) of condence or worry. The nal sample included 97 subjects for analysis.
2.2. Stimuli
The experiment was conducted in MATLAB using Psychophysics Toolbox version 3 (Brainard, 1997). We use a 2AFC numerosity task, which is known to be convenient to t SDT models (Nieder & Dehaene, 2009) and may be positively affected by
emotions (see Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006, for the effect of emotions on perception). The stimuli consisted of two circles with

S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

191

Fig. 1. Experimental design. (A) describes the timeline of the experiment. First subjects observe the characteristics of the bet: the amount of the stake is 20
or 200 and the goal is 2, 3 or 4 successes over 5. In the loss frame they play for not losing and they lose if they fail more than 5 minus the goal times over 5;
in the gain frame they play for wining and they win if they succeed at least the goal times over 5. Then they give their level of worry against this bet on a
scale between 0 and 9 and their level of condence in succeeding to the bet on a scale between and 100. After that they do 5 trials of perceptual task with
the following sequence: after observing a xation cross, subjects initiate the stimuli which consist of two circles with a certain amount of dots inside (B is an
example of our stimuli). While one circle contains always 50 dots the other circle contains 50 + xc dots. The value of xc is determined by a psychophysical
staircase in order to obtain a success rate of 71%. After observing the stimulus for 700 ms subjects have to make their decision and indicate whether it was
the right or the left circle that contained the most of dots. Then they have to give the level of condence on the accuracy of this decision on a scale going
from 0% to 100% with steps of 5. (C) explains the mechanisms of the condences elicitation by probabilities matching. It consists in asking individuals
whether they prefer to be paid according to the correctness of their answer or according to a specied lottery. A number l1 is drawn between 0 and 100. If
their condence is higher than this number they will be paid on the accuracy of their decision: they win one point if the answer is correct and lose 1 point
otherwise. If the condence is lower than l1 they will be paid according to the following lottery: they will have a probability l1 of winning 1 point and a
probability 100 - l1 of losing 1 point. A second number l2 is then drawn between 0 and 100; if it is higher than l1 they win otherwise they lose.

a certain number of dots in each circle (see Fig. 1B). All dots were of the same size and we control for the distance between each
dot. One of the two circles always contained 50 dots while the other contained 50 + xc dots. Before the experiment we estimated the value of xc needed to obtain a success rate of 71% using a psychophysical staircase (Levitt, 1971; see below). The
position of the circle containing the greater number of dots was randomly assigned to be on the left or right on each trial.
2.3. Task and procedure
2.3.1. Practice and thresholding
Subjects initially performed practice trials of the dots task without condence ratings, in which full feedback was given.
We used these trials to calibrate difculty of the dots task. The calibration phase was done by one-up two-down staircase
(Levitt, 1971): after two consecutive correct answers one dot was removed, and after one failure one dot was added. We
stopped the calibration after 30 reversals in the staircase and the value of xc was calculated as the mean dot number across
the two last reversals of the staircase. Subjects then performed 10 trials of the tasks with condence elicitation and feedback
both on their accuracy and on the results of the elicitation mechanism. Finally they performed 30 trials without feedback to
check whether the calibration procedure had succeeded.
2.3.2. Experiment phase
The experimental design comprised two aspects, a bet phase in which we induced emotions and a perceptual phase in
which subjects performed the numerosity task with choice and condence. The experiment consisted in 64 blocks of 5 trials.
Each block is dened by a risky bet that subjects have to face. These bets have three main components: their goal (the objective of the bet is to obtain at least 2, 3 or 4 success over the 5 next trials), the amount of money in play (20 or 200) and the
frame (bet for win or to avoid loss i.e. a gain or loss framing). The sequence of a block was the following. First subjects
observed the three characteristics of the bet. Then they made a judgment about their level of worry about this bet on a
10-point scale from 0 (any worry) to 9 (very worried). We also asked them to reveal their premium coverage for the bet1
and their condence in the bets success. Then they performed 5 trials of the perceptual task. No feedback was provided either
on the results of the bet or on the success of each trial. Each trial of the task was based on the following sequence (see Fig. 1A).
1
We elicited this certainty equivalent by a BDM mechanism (Becker, DeGroot & Marschak, 1964). We do not provide a full explanation of this aspect of the
experiment as we do not use it in further analysis.

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S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

First two outline circles were displayed with xation crosses at their center. The subject initiated the trial by pressing the
space key on a standard computer keyboard. The dot stimuli then appeared for 700 ms, and subjects were asked to respond
left or right by pressing the f or j keys, respectively. There was no time limit for responding. After responding subjects were
asked to indicate their level of condence in their choice on a gauge from 0% to 100% with steps of 5%, using the up and down
keys, again with no time limit on the response.
Overall the experimental phase was divided into 64 blocks (and thus 320 trials of the perceptual task) with the following
characteristics: 32 with a goal of 2/5, 16 with a goal of 3/5, 16 with a goal of 4/5; 32 with a stake of 200, 32 with a 20; 32
with the loss frame, 32 with the gain frame. Overall, subjects gave 320 ratings of condence and 64 levels of worry with the
three characteristics balanced between trials.
2.3.3. Payment
Subjects payment comprised 5 for participation and two variable parts: one bet was randomly chosen and subjects
either won the stake, received nothing if they were not covered by the BDM insurance mechanism, or received the certainty
equivalent in case of coverage by the insurance; they also accumulated points according to the accuracy of their stated condence. The incentive mechanism used was the probability matching rule (Fig. 1C) by which they won or lost points on each
trial. This mechanism can be seen as a generalization of the no-loss gambling studied by Dienes and Seth (2010). It consists in
asking individuals whether they prefer to be paid according to the correctness of their answer or according to a specied
lottery. To elicit a subjects subjective probability about an event E, the subject is asked to provide the probability p that
makes him indifferent between a lottery L(E) that gives a positive reward x if E happens, and x otherwise and a lottery
L(p) that yields x with probability p, and x with probability (1  p). A random number q is then drawn in the interval
[0, 1]. If q is smaller than p, the subject is paid according to the lottery L(E). Otherwise, the subject is paid according to a lottery L(q) that yields x with probability q and x with probability (1  q).
This a proper scoring rule i.e. it provides incentives for subjects to reveal their subjective probability truthfully (see
Gajdos, Massoni, & Vergnaud, 2014). Suppose that the subject has a probability of success is p but reports a probability
r p. If r < p, the lotteries according to which the subject (given the subjective probability p) is paid are represented in
the following table, as a function of the random value q.

Reports r < p
Reports p

q<r<p

r<q<p

r<p<q

L(p)
L(p)

L(q)
L(p)

L(q)
L(q)

Whenever r < q < p, L(p) yields a higher payment than L(q). Thus, the subjects expected payoff is higher when reporting p
than when reporting r < p.
Similarly, if the subject reports r > p, the payments (according to her subjective probability p) are described in the following table.

Reports r > p
Reports p

q<p<r

p<q<r

p<r<q

L(p)
L(p)

L(p)
L(q)

L(q)
L(q)

Whenever p < q < r, L(q) yields a higher payment than L(p). Thus, the expected payoff is higher when reporting p than
when reporting r > p.
A major advantage of this mechanism is that it provides the subject incentives to reveal her subjective probabilities truthfully, while not being contaminated by his attitude towards risk.2 Furthermore Gajdos, Massoni, & Vergnaud (2014) show that
the elicited condences t the SDT predictions and thus it supports the use of SDT-measures such as the meta-d0 .
In practice the Matching Probabilities mechanism is implemented using a scale of 0100, with steps of 5 (see Fig. 1C).
After having made the decision, subjects are told that they are entitled to a ticket for a lottery based on their answers accuracy. This lottery gives them 1 point if their answer is correct, and 1 point otherwise. Subjects have then to report on a scale
ranging from 0 to 100 the minimal percentage of chance p they require to accept an exchange between their lottery ticket
and a lottery ticket that gives p chances of winning 1 point and 100  p chance of losing 1 point. A number l1 is drawn
according to a uniform distribution between 0 and 100. If l1 is smaller than p, subjects keep their initial lottery ticket. If
l1 is higher than p, they are paid according to a lottery that gives them l1 chances of winning. In this case, a random draw
determines the payment: a number l2 is determined using a uniform distribution between 0 and 100, the lottery leads to
a win if l1 is higher than l2.

2
On the contrary to the post-wagering method (Persaud, McLeod, & Cowey, 2007) which is the other main method uses to elicit condence with incentives
and which suffers from a risk preferences dependence (see Dienes & Seth, 2010; Schurger & Sher, 2008; Fleming & Dolan, 2009).

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As the mechanism might seem complicated we explained in details to subjects how their stated condence will determine their payment and showed how different rating strategies will lead to different earning schemes. The accumulated
points paid at the exchange rate of 1 point = 0.05.
2.4. Data analysis
In order to do mean comparison we split the data into two groups. We dened a block of 5 trials as high worry if the
normalized worry is strictly positive and as low worry if it is negative or null. This split leads to 48% of trials with high
worry and 52% with low worry.
We dene two components of metacognition as calibration and discrimination. Calibration is obtained by computing the
mean of the difference between condence and accuracy. Discrimination is measured by the difference between meta-d0 and
d0 . The measure of d0 is: d0 FC = Z(prob(Response = Right|Stimulus = Right))  Z(prob(Response = Right|Stimulus = Left)). Metad0 is a new measures introduced by Maniscalco and Lau (2012) that controls for a performance confound in the discrimination measure. It is known that type II decisions are affected by the treatment of the type I signal (Galvin, Podd, Drga, &
Whitmore, 2003), but meta-d0 denes the level of d0 that an SDT-ideal observer would need to generate this set of type II
answers. Thus a SDT-optimal observer will have a null difference between meta-d0 and d0 while for a real subject the value
of this difference is a robust measure of metacognitive ability which is independent of the type I and type II criterion (see
Barrett, Dienes & Seth, 2014, for a detailed analysis). Meta-d0 is computed using the Matlab code of Maniscalco and Lau
(2012) available on their website (http://www.columbia.edu/~bsm2105/type2sdt/). Barrett, Dienes & Seth (2014) show that
the stability of this measure may be questionable in the case of a very small number of trials for the different types of
responses (levels of condence for correct and incorrect answer and for right and left stimuli). But the high number of trials
and their distribution excludes this instability in the present study.
A dynamic measure of type I performances is derived from the parameters of the diffusion model (Ratcliff & McKoon,
2008, for a review) and is computed on Matlab using the D-MAT toolbox (Vandekerckhove & Tuerlinckx, 2007, 2008). This
toolbox performs an estimation of the different parameters of a diffusion model: three parameters for the decision process
(the boundary separation, a, which captures the speed-accuracy trade-off; the drift rate, z, showing the amount of information; and the starting point, z, which gives information about a bias in the decision); one parameter for the non-decision (the
non-decision time, Ter, that measures all the other process involved, e.g. motor reaction time); and three parameters of intertrial variability (the inter-trial standard deviation of the drift rate, eta, for the variation of attention; the inter-trial ranges of
bias, sz, and non-decision time, st, that captures the subjects variability for both measures). We then t different models on
the data at an individual level: rst an estimation on the whole dataset, then some models allowing one or several parameters to vary under high and low worry while the other parameters stay identical under the two conditions. The different
models estimated are the following: variation of the boundary only, of the drift only, of the boundary and the drift, of the
boundary, the drift and the non-decision time, of the previous ones and the bias, of the previous ones and the parameters
of inter-trial variability. We can then compare the parameters under high and low worry using paired t-tests.
The relationships between different measures were analyzed with Pearsons product-moment correlations. Comparisons
of their means were conducted using paired t-tests. Comparisons of condence distributions are based on two-sample KolmogorovSmirnov tests and their representation is done by a kernel estimation of the density on the trials under high and
low worry.
We examine whether condence is better explained by adding an emotional component. We compare two models: one in
which condence is explained by the level of accuracy and the reaction time and one in which we add the normalized level of
worry in addition. Regressions on the full dataset were done by ordinary least squares (OLS) method with a clustering of the
standard errors by individuals. Models comparisons are based on different measures of goodness-of-t provided by the tstat command under Stata. The support for one model against the others was obtained using the grades of evidence of
Raftery (1995) which compare the Bayesian information criterion (BIC; Schwarz, 1978) of each model by the following equations: BIC = 2ln L + k ln n where L is the log-likelihood of the model, k the numbers of free parameters and n the number of
observations. The difference in terms of BIC provides some supports for one model against the other with the following
grades: none for a negative difference; weak for a value between 0 and 2, positive between 2 and 6; strong between 6
and 10; and very strong for a difference higher than 10. We additionally compared each model to a null intercept-only model
in terms of reduction of the variance.

3. Results
We rst checked whether the experimental design has succeeded in implementing different levels of worry at an individual level. The mean level of worry was 4.75 (s.d. 2.64) and varied by individuals from 0.27 to 8.45 (s.d. 1.57). In order
to control for a potential bias in the use of the worry scale and to have comparable values across subjects we transform
the reported level of worry into a normalized level of worry by computing the individual z-score of worry.
We expected a higher level of worry in the loss frame, for high stakes and for high difculties. We examined this by performing an OLS regression of these characteristics on the worry. Table 1 presents these effects.

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S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

Table 1
Mean effects of the characteristics on the level of worry.

Worry
% of subjects

Goal 3/5 vs. 2/5

Goal 4/5 vs. 2/5

Frame loss vs. frame gain

High stake vs. low stake

+25.25%***
51%

+56.1%***
70%

+13.3%***
48%

+14.0%***
38%

***
Means statistically signicant at 1% and comes from an OLS regression. Percentages of subjects affected by the characteristics are those for which we
have a signicant effect (at 10% or less) in individual OLS regressions.

These results show that our experimental design was efcient at inducing changes of worry by varying the characteristics
of the bet. Thus we can study the effects of variation of worry on type I and type II decisions.
We rst examine whether the worry affects the type I decision. Task performance on high worry trials (mean 68.5%, s.d.
0.08) does not differ from those with low worry (mean 68.3, s.d. 0.09; t(96) = 0.27, P = .790) as well as reaction time (mean
1.203, s.d. 0.32 vs. mean 1.201, s.d. 0.35; t(96) = 0.12, P = .904). This lack of effect of the level of worry in the treatment of the
signal is conrmed in terms of SDT modeling by comparing the d0 FC (no signicant difference: mean 1.064, s.d. 0.50 vs. mean
1.072, s.d. 0.53; t(96) = 0.14, P = .882) and by tting a diffusion model on the dataset. Diffusion models have been used to
emphasis emotional impacts on the decision process even if the raw comparison of reaction times does not reect an effect
(White, Ratcliff, Vasey, & McKoon, 2010). However all parameters of the dynamic model (drift, threshold, non-decision time,
bias and internal variations) were not statistically different with high or low worry. Table 2 shows the mean values of the
parameters for the whole model and for models allowing one or several parameters to vary under high and low worry. All the
differences between the parameters estimated under high and low worry are statistically non-signicant.
Furthermore allowing only one parameter to vary does not improve the likelihood of the model against a model without
variation induced by worry. Thus we can assert that the level of worry has no impact on the type I decision.
We next examined the effects of worry on type II decisions and metacognitive abilities. First we note that condence and
worry are weakly but signicatively correlated (r = .02, P < .0001) on the whole dataset. This link is due to condence on
high worry trials being systematically lower (mean 69.5%, s.d. 0.12) than on low worry ones (mean 70.6%, s.d. 0.12;
t(96) = 2.40, P = .009). As performance is not affected this effect implies signicantly lower overcondence for trials with
high worry (mean +0.98%, s.d. 0.14) than with low one (mean +2.26%, s.d. 0.14; t(96) = 1.72, P = .044 see Fig. 2A). Note
that the bias for worrying trials is not statistically different from 0 (t(96) = 0.695, P = .489) and reects perfect calibration
(consistent with the review of Baranski & Petrusic, 1994, on perceptual tasks). This effect shows a positive impact of worry
on the calibration index and thus on metacognitive ability. However it is for the moment not possible to exclude that it is
more an automatic effect rather than an increase of the metacognitive ability. Indeed the better t of the calibration could be
attributed to an effect of worry on condence, together with a constant performance. A more robust and signicant effect is
observed on discrimination ability (see Fig. 2B). The difference between meta-d0 and d0 is systematically lower for the high
worry trials (mean 0.3308, s.d. 0.45) than for to the low worry ones (mean 0.4282, s.d. 0.52; t(96) = 1.88, P = .032). As the
meta-d0 difference is not affected by the mean level of condence we can assert that a high level of worry leads to an increase
in metacognitive ability. On our dataset we cannot attribute this effect to an increase of the attentional effort as the reaction
times for condence are not statistically different.3 Thus declaring a high level of worry changes the formation of condence
and increases its quality. To conrm this hypothesis we perform a KolmogorovSmirnov test of difference in the distribution of
condence for high and low worry trials. The two distributions are statistically different according to this test (D = 0.0317,
P < .0001) and this conrms that subjects use a different (and a better) rating strategy under high worry (see Fig. 3).
We have found a signicant and positive impact of worry on calibration and discrimination ability. It is interesting to
check whether this improvement is linked between these two components. The correlation between the variations with
worry of the calibration index and the meta-d0 -d0 difference is statistically signicant (r = .41, P < .0001). Thus we can assert
that worry has a positive effect on metacognition and subjects improve their abilities on both aspects: calibration and discrimination. It is interesting to see whether the level of worry felt before the trials is a good predictor of condence in a perceptual task. We compare a model in which condence is explained by the accuracy and reaction time of the trial against a
model in which condence is explained by the two previous variables and the level of worry anticipated for the trials. These
two nested models were estimated by an OLS regression on the whole dataset with individual clusters of the standard errors.
The rst model provides the following coefcients: 0.0576 (t(31040) = 8.65, P < .0001) for the accuracy, 0.0535
(t(31040) = 6.01, P < .0001) for the reaction time and 0.7228 (t(31040) = 41.69, P < .0001) for the intercept while the model
with normalized worry gives the following ones: 0.0576 (t(31040) = 8.65, P < .0001) for the accuracy, 0.0535
(t(31360) = 6.02, P < .0001) for the reaction time, 0.0053 (t(31040) = 2.79, P = .006) for the normalized worry and
0.7228 (t(31040) = 41.68, P < .0001) for the intercept. Both models outperform a null intercept-only model in terms of reduction of the variance (for the model without worry: F(2, 96) = 49.88, P < .0001 and with worry: F(2, 96) = 36.98, P < .0001. The
comparison of the goodness-of-t of these two models is done in terms of BIC difference. The difference of 11.018 in BIC provides a very strong support for the model with worry.4 If we perform model comparison at an individual level, we obtain

3
4

This measure of reaction time has to be used with caution as the times to answer are affected by scale usage.
Note that if we use the level of worry reported and not its normalized value we obtain a difference of 273 in terms of BIC between the two models.

Table 2
Mean values of the diffusion model parameters for the different models estimated. (1) is the model estimated on the whole data set; (2) allows the boundary separation, a, to vary under high and low worry; (3) allows
the drift rate, v, to vary; (4) allows the boundary separation and the drift rate to vary; (5) allows the previous parameters and the non-decision time, Ter, to vary; (5) allows to previous parameters and the bias, z, to
vary; (6) allows the previous parameters and the inter-trial variability parameters (eta for the drift rate, sz for the bias and st for the non-decision time) to vary. When the parameters are estimated under high and low
worry a t-test of difference is displayed with the value of the difference, the t statistic and the P-value.
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

0.1735

0.2008

0.1512

High 0.2591
Low 0.2414
diff = 0.0099
t = 0.2845, P = .777
0.1638

0.0902

0.1073

High 0.1621
Low 0.1849
diff = 0.0228
t = 0.8575, P = .394
0.1035

High 0.2591
Low 0.2424
diff = 0.0167
t = 0.3862, P = .700
High 0.1353
Low 0.1402
diff = 0.0049
t = 0.1094, P = .913
0.1036

High 0.2715
Low 0.2392
diff = 0.0323
t = 0.7270, P = 469
High 0.1585
Low 0.1639
diff = 0.0054
t = 0.0706, P = .944
0.1052

Ter

0.8141

0.8908

0.8114

0.8606

eta

0.2190

0.2755

0.2705

0.2675

High 0.8737
Low 0.8871
diff = 0.0134
t = 0.6334, P = .528
0.2741

High 0.2731
Low 0.2409
diff = 0.0321
t = 0.7192, P = .474
High 0.1572
Low 0.1639
diff = 0.0334
t = 0.4286, P = .669
High 0.1066
Low 0.1059
diff = 0.0007
t = 0.3032, P = .770
High 0.8758
Low 0.8924
diff = 0.0166
t = 0.7461, P = .458
0.2713

sz

0.0850

0.0912

0.0891

0.0871

0.0951

0.0952

st

0.5276

0.6075

0.4990

0.5985

0.5786

0.5829

High 0.2435
Low 0.2336
diff = 0.0099
t = 0.3051, P = .761
High 0.1408
Low 0.1609
diff = 0.0201
t = 0.7038, P = .484
High 0.1103
Low 0.1083
diff = 0.0020
t = 1.2021, P = .233
High 0.9142
Low 0.9286
diff = 0.0144
t = 0.5795, P = .564
High 0.2835
Low 0.2918
diff = 0.0084
t = 0.5770, P = .566
High 0.1036
Low 0.1043
diff = 0.0007
t = 0.1480, P = .883
High 0.6090
Low 0.6396
diff = 0.0306
t = 0.6364, P = .566

S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

Parameters

195

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S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

Fig. 2. Metacognitive abilities. Comparison of the mean values of the metacognitive abilities measured on the trials with worry (in white) and on the trials
without worry (in gray). The error bars represent the standard errors of each mean. (A) Comparison of the calibration index. The decrease of overcondence
under worry is statistically signicant at 5% (P = .044). (B) Comparison of the difference between meta-d0 and d0 . The increase of discrimination ability under
worry is statistically signicant at 5% (P = .032).

Fig. 3. Distribution of condence. Representation of the condence distributions for high worry (in blue) and low worry (in magenta) trials with a kernel
estimation. The condences under high worry are more bunched in the low level while the condences under low worry have more high values. This
conrms the difference of use of the scale under worry as shown by the KolmogorovSmirnov test of difference. (For interpretation of the references to color
in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

strong support for the model with worry, as the mean difference in BIC is 6.497 (s.d. 11.21) with a range of values from 0.053 to
73.001. We thus conclude that taking into account the level of worry in a model of condence formation improves the t of this
model when explaining subjective probabilities in a perceptual task.
4. Discussion
We studied how emotions impact the metacognitive abilities. We induced emotions by an experimental paradigm with
framing effects based on loss aversion and the magnitude of the stakes. Even if this design is less common than mood inductions by priming or pharmacological manipulations (see Phelps, 2009, for a review of the available mechanisms), it has the
advantage of being more ecologically valid and can match with the experimental constraints of multiple elds (psychology,
economics, and neurosciences). We measured worry by a self-report scale for this same reason of ecological validity. This
measurement might be less accurate than physiological measures but it has been shown to be efcient for relating currently
experienced emotions (Mauss & Robinson, 2009). Furthermore in our design worry could vary over the experiment and is
endogenous to the choice. This is preferable to inducing exogenous worry (priming) or between subjects variations (pharmacological). We found that a negative emotion, worry, was associated with an increase of the quality of calibration (diminution of the bias) and discrimination (decrease of the difference between meta-d0 and d0 ). The distribution of stated
condence under worry was different from those without worry. This change of ratings strategy could be associated with
a higher willingness for control due to a negative emotional mood. Assuming that emotion provides additional energy,
the lack of effect on the type I decision gives support to the idea that this supplement of attention and control is invested
in the type II decision. Note that in our study the rewards are based on the accuracy of the elicited condence and not on
the accuracy of the perceptual decision. Even if we cannot exclude that it may bring the attention of the subjects more
on the condence than on the task we assume that this effect is not enough strong to invalidate our results. First the accuracy

S. Massoni / Consciousness and Cognition 29 (2014) 189198

197

of the condence is linked to the accuracy of the answer. Furthermore the results of the literature show that the performance
in a discrimination task is increased for emotional stimuli or emotional cues and not for a neutral stimulus as ours
(Zeelenberg, Wagenmakers, & Rotteveel, 2006; Yiend, 2010). Nevertheless one drawback of our experiment is that the
recording of reaction times for condence was imperfect and forbids a dynamic analysis of condence. Indeed it could be
interesting to see whether the effect of emotions will change the dynamic process of subjective probability formation. This
question could be addressed by tting a dynamic type II diffusion model (Pleskac & Busemyer, 2010; Ratcliff & Starns, 2009).
If worry has such positive impacts on the metacognition it would be useful to understand what factors could explain the
individual tendency to worry (see Keogh, French, & Reidy, 1998, for an extensive study). We studied the relationships
between mean level of worry by subjects and different psychological measures asked in a pre-experiment questionnaire.
The tendency to worry, measured by the PSWQ (Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990) is highly correlated with the
mean level of worry (r = .2169, P = .034) showing that an aggregate measure could be useful to anticipate the individual level
of worry felt facing choices. We also measure two factors of the Big Five Inventory (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) and nd a
signicant positive relationship of worry with neuroticism (r = .2047, P = .045) and a non-signicant negative one with conscientiousness (r = .1201, P = .244). A scale of mood introspection (BMIS, Mayer & Gaschke, 1988) providing different oppositions of moods5 did not give any signicant relationship with worry. Other factors such as preferences (risk and loss aversion,
impatience, risky behaviors, etc.) lead also to non-signicant results. These correlations between personality and worry help us
to dene a typology of worried individuals. Thus even if the emotional mood is not the primary focus of a study it will be helpful
to measure it, at least indirectly by questionnaires, to take into account the potential bias induced by worry in type II decision.
In the present study we take worry as a proxy of a negative emotion (anxiety) but the emotions have a multiplicity of
components and implications for decision-making (Pster & Bohm, 2008, for a review). Our result that links emotions to
an increase in metacognitive abilities should be replicated with different types of emotions, with the same and opposite
valence, in order to be generalized.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the ANR France under Grant Riskemotion ANR-08-RISKNAT. I am grateful to Steve Fleming, Thibault Gajdos, Geraint Rees, Jean-Christophe Vergnaud and two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments.
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