The Bite Is Worse Than the Bark: Associations of Personality and Depressive Symptoms With Memory Discrepancy

The discrepancy between subjective memory rating and objective memory performance is the tendency to misestimate one's memory. For example, better self-rated memory compared to performance on memory tasks reflects an overestimation of one's memory. This discrepancy may shape how individuals cognitively age: Overestimating one's memory could mask incident cognitive decline and underestimation could act as a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. This study sought to examine the association between personality traits and depressive symptoms and memory discrepancy in five large samples of middle-aged and older adults (N > 23,000). We preregistered three hypotheses: neuroticism would be related to underestimation, extraversion to overestimation, and conscientiousness to higher accuracy. Controlling for sociodemographic covariates (age, gender, race, ethnicity, and education), results from regression models were pooled using random-effect meta-analyses. Openness was associated with underestimation of memory performance. Contrary to our hypothesis, neuroticism was related to overestimation. Surprisingly, depressive symptoms were also associated with overestimation. Cognitive status (impaired vs. unimpaired) did not moderate the association between personality and memory discrepancy, but it did with depressive symptoms, with a null or opposite effect among individuals with impaired cognition. In conclusion, although previous studies demonstrate consistent associations between personality traits and subjective memory ratings and memory performance, the current findings suggest null or unexpected links between personality and memory discrepancy. The findings suggest that clinicians should not dismiss cognitive complaints in the presence of depressive symptoms or high neuroticism because objective memory performance could be even worse than self-rated memory.