Does social context impact metacognition? Evidence from stereotype threat in a visual search task

Thibault Gajdos (1) , Isabelle Régner (1) , Pascal Huguet (2) , Marine Hainguerlot (3) , Jean-Christophe Vergnaud (3) , Jérôme Sackur (4) , Vincent de Gardelle (3, 5)

1 LPC - Laboratoire de psychologie cognitive
2 LAPSCO - Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive
3 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
4 LSCP - Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique
5 PSE - Paris School of Economics

While recent studies have emphasized the role of metacognitive judgments in social interactions, whether social context might reciprocally impact individuals’ metacognition remains an open question. It has been proposed that such might be the case in situations involving stereotype threat. Here, we provide the first empirical test of this hypothesis. Using a visual search task, we asked participants, on a trial-by-trial basis, to monitor the unfolding and accuracy of their search processes, and we developed a computational model to measure the accuracy of their metacognition. Results indicated that stereotype threat enhanced metacognitive monitoring of both outcomes and processes. Our study thus shows that social context can actually affect metacognition.

Domaines: Psychologie

Thibault Gajdos, Isabelle Régner, Pascal Huguet, Marine Hainguerlot, Jean-Christophe Vergnaud, et al.. Does social context impact metacognition? Evidence from stereotype threat in a visual search task. PLoS ONE, 2019, 14 (4), pp.e0215050. ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0215050⟩. ⟨hal-02130408⟩