In many situations, the ability to make appropriate metacognitive judgments on our performance is essential to make decisions and adapt our behaviour. Past research suggests a strong relationship between metacognition and emotional disorders such as depression. Depressive disorders have been associated with an under-estimation bias: depressive patients report lower confidence in their performance than healthy individuals. It is currently not clear whether the induction of a negative mood in healthy participants has similar consequences. Yet, such knowledge would permit to isolate the causal influence of the negative affect on metacognition, free of all the comorbidities associated with depression. In the present study, we used a combination of films, pictures and recalls to induce negative and neutral moods during a perceptual metacognitive task. Negative mood induction had no impact on the perceptual task. Participants did report lower confidence levels in the negative condition compared to a neutral condition. The present study thus confirms a causal relationship between negative affect and metacognitive abilities.

在许多情况下，对我们的表现做出适当的元认知判断的能力对于做出决定和调整我们的行为至关重要。过去的研究表明，元认知与抑郁等情绪障碍之间存在密切关系。抑郁症与低估偏差有关：与健康人相比，抑郁症患者对自己的表现的信心较低。目前尚不清楚在健康参与者中诱发负面情绪是否会产生类似的后果。然而，这样的知识将允许隔离负面影响对元认知的因果影响，而没有与抑郁症相关的所有合并症。在本研究中，我们在感知元认知任务中结合使用电影、图片和回忆来诱发消极和中性情绪。消极情绪诱导对知觉任务没有影响。与中性条件相比，参与者确实报告了在负面条件下的信心水平较低。因此，本研究证实了负面情绪和元认知能力之间的因果关系。