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Participants were undergraduate psychology students who participated in exchange for course credit. Fifty (42 females and 8 males) individuals were randomly assigned to receive either a provocation or no provocation induction. Participants were selected from a large initial pool of 355 individuals first screened on a 6-item adaptation of the STAXI-2: T-Anger scale approximately 5 months prior to the study and were subsequently re-assessed on the full 10-item version of the STAXI-2: T-Anger one week prior to the study. Participants scored in the medium-high range 15–38 (M = 21.56, SD = 6.03) on the full version of the STAXI-2: T-Anger.
Participants completed the STAXI-2: T-Anger, STAXI-2: AX, ARS, STAI-Y, and BDI-II (see Experiment 1). Participants also completed the PANAS-X, a widely used 24-item self-report measure that assesses state affect at given points in time. Participants completed a 15-item list of anagrams [34]. Provoked participants completed a set comprising difficult anagrams (e.g., dmmpaiunneo = pandemonium). Non-Provoked participants completed a set comprising easy anagrams (e.g., rfsto = frost). All participants were given 4 minutes to complete the anagram task. The AMT was identical to Experiment 1.
Participants completed self-report personality measures (STAXI-2: T-Anger, STAXI-2: AX, ARS, STAI-Y) one week prior to attending the experimental session. They were individually tested at the time of the experiment, and their responses were filmed. On arrival in the laboratory, they were told that the study was investigating the relationship between cognitive abilities and autobiographical memory. This study was approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee. Following written informed consent, participants completed the PANAS-X and the BDI-II to assess their current affective states. They were then asked to complete a set of anagrams (the difficulty of which depended on their allocated group) as a measure of their cognitive ability. The experimenter left the laboratory for three-minutes to score participants’ performance; responses were marked using either a red pen (provocation group) or green pen (no-provocation group). Upon her return, irrespective of their actual performance on the anagram task, she presented participants with feedback regarding their scores. Provoked participants were insulted in an irritated and exasperated tone of voice: ‘‘You really got a lot of these wrong. This data is useless to me. We should probably just start all over, but to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want to waste my time.” Non-Provoked participants were told in a neutral tone of voice: “Your performance on this task was fine. We can use this data. In fact, you performed within the average range. This is generally what we’ve found from other people around your age at university.” Following feedback, participants were lead through instructions for the AMT and practice trials. The experimenter then told Provoked participants, again in an irritated tone of voice: “Let’s see if you can do better on this task than you did on the anagram task.” She told Non-Provoked participants in a neutral tone: “You’re performing fine so far. You seem to know what to do.” Participants then proceeded to complete the AMT. At the conclusion of the AMT, participants completed a second PANAS-X which was modified to assess their affective reactions at the time immediately following the provocation. Participants were also asked to rate the extent to which they thought about their anagram performance during completion of the AMT (1 = “I didn’t think about it at all”; 9 = “I thought about it the whole time”). They were then debriefed and thanked for their participation.
Memory content was coded in an identical manner to Experiment 1. A second independent rater coded 25% of participants’ responses. The mean inter-rater reliability was 0.88 (p < .001) for self-relatedness and 0.93 (p < .001) for anger-relatedness. Facial expressions prior to and during anagram feedback were scored from video-recordings of participants by a rater who was blind to participants’ experimental condition. Scoring was based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; [35], which is a system used to categorize facial muscle movement or ‘facial action units’ (FAUs) in the expression of emotions. For the purposes of this study, FAUs specific to the expression of anger were identified, and included: (a) inner brow lowerer, (b) upper lip raiser, (c) lid tightener, and (d) lip tightener. Participants were scored on the degree to which they displayed movement in these FAUs using an 8-point Likert-scale (0 = no movement, 7 = extreme movement). Participants were additionally scored on the global intensity of expression using an 8-point Likert scale (1 = not at all angry, 8 = extremely angry). An independent rater coded 25% of facial expressions. The mean inter-rater reliability was 0.90 (p < .001) for the four FAUs and 0.87 (p < .001) for global intensity.
Participant characteristics were assessed between induction conditions by multiple comparisons that set a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha (p = .05/9 = .006). Anger-relatedness was analysed with 2 (Provocation Group) x (3) (Cue Type) mixed model ANCOVA that controlled for depression severity. Memory content was analyzed using a 2 (Provocation Group) x 3 (Cue Type) x 2 (Content Category) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated a significant overall effect [F(6, 43) = 2.32, p < .05, ηp2 = .24], followed by separate. 2 (Provocation Group) x 3 (Content) ANOCVAs.
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