The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) in adults and children: testing trait-congruent false memories in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm

Abstract The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) is an individual differences variable characterized by negative reactions to laughter. Based on the theory of trait-congruent information processing, we conducted a series of experiments to examine a gelotophobia-related memory bias toward laughter in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The DRM is a reliable method to provoke false memories (FM). In Study 1 (101 adults), gelotophobia related positively to FM of the “laughter”-lure in recognition, and greater confidence in that FM (d ≤ 0.32). However, findings did not replicate in independent samples of 167 adults and 172 children of the preregistered Study 2. Aggregating the findings across studies indicated that gelotophobia is unrelated to laughter-related FM in the DRM paradigm (d ≤ 0.10) and that FM do not account for gelotophobes’ memories of ridicule.