Framing influences aggregate judgments of learning

Previous research has focused on what internal and external cues influence metacognitive judgment, but has failed to thoroughly explore the impact of the question itself. Framing is known to influence judgments such as product quality (Levin & Gaeth, 1988) and confidence in trivia answers (Koriat, Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1980). In these experiments, students were asked to estimate their amount of learning and improvement, with either positive or negative frames, or estimate average learning and improvement of students in a hypothetical learning situation. The results were that framing influences judgments of learning in a learning situation, but not in a hypothetical scenario, suggesting a selfenhancement bias.