23 United Journal of Awadh Scholars (2011) ISSN 0974-0503 Volume 5 No. 2, pp. 23-30 Personality and metamemory judgements in witnessed events Gyanesh Kumar Tiwari Ph. D. 1 A B S T R A C T The study examined the effects of two personality types i.e., introversion and extraversion on the two measures of metamemory judgements viz., judgement of learning and judgement of source.Twenty introvert and twenty extravert adolescents age range 15yrs 06 mo to 17yrs 06 mo (M= 16 yrs 06 mo) watched two video-clipped events followed by two corresponding passages. Their estimates of judgement of learning and judgement of source for central and peripheral details were tested on items of video-clipped events and written passages under low and high levels of emotional arousal. Introverts showed higher percent likelihood of judgements of learning and source for central details while the extraverts exhibited higher likelihood on these measures for peripheral details. A significant interaction effects among personality, arousal and detail type were observed for all the two measures. Keywords: Metamemory judgements, Eyewitness memory, Recall accuracy, Personality, Emotional arousal, Types of detail. Introduction Personality significantly interacts with ones various cognitive processes and functioning and thereby influencing the way one carry out various cognitive tasks in different situations of life. Personality make up of an individual has been reported to make differences in his indices of cognitive competence. The responsible factors for differences in cognitive performance of introverts and extraverts have been well documented in research literature. First systematic effort to explain such effects of personality was done by Eysenck ( Eysenck, 1957, 1967). He argued that it is the differences in nature and course of cortical arousal of introverts and extraverts that cause such differences. As per Eysenck, a person who is extraverted has a low basal arousal and tends to obtain information directly from the senses, whereas one who is introverted has a high basal arousal and a preference for obtaining information intuitively (Eysenck, 1967, 1981; Von Franz, 1979; Whitmont, 1978). In the other words, Eysenck (1957, 1967) argued that the personality dimension of extraversion–introversion is based on differential arousability of cortico-reticular circuit, which includes the cerebral cortex, the thalamus and the ascending reticular activating system. He further argued that this system is more readily aroused in introverts than in extraverts. That is the reason why introverts become more easily aroused and show a higher level of cortical arousal. This differential arousability is believed to influence many observable behaviours and performance. It has been shown in many studies that extraverts and introverts possess different cognitive patterning. This assumption has been tested in many studies showing introverts to 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, M.L.K.P.G. College, Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, 271201, India. Email ID- gyaneshpsychology@gmail.com