diff --git a/docs/topics/request-response.rst b/docs/topics/request-response.rst
index 8bdbd52e4..bf9acf653 100644
--- a/docs/topics/request-response.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/request-response.rst
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ Request objects
         cookies for that domain and will be sent again in future requests. That's
         the typical behaviour of any regular web browser. However, if, for some
         reason, you want to avoid merging with existing cookies you can instruct
-        Scrapy to do so by setting the ``dont_merge_cookies`` item in the
+        Scrapy to do so by setting the ``dont_merge_cookies`` key in the
         :attr:`Request.meta`. 
       
         Example of request without merging cookies::
diff --git a/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/cookies.py b/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/cookies.py
index 09eb18ece..b99c4b338 100644
--- a/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/cookies.py
+++ b/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/cookies.py
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ class CookiesMiddleware(object):
         dispatcher.connect(self.spider_closed, signals.spider_closed)
 
     def process_request(self, request, spider):
-        if request.meta.get('dont_merge_cookies', False):
+        if 'dont_merge_cookies' in request.meta:
             return
 
         jar = self.jars[spider]
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ class CookiesMiddleware(object):
         self._debug_cookie(request)
 
     def process_response(self, request, response, spider):
-        if request.meta.get('dont_merge_cookies', False):
+        if 'dont_merge_cookies' in request.meta:
             return response
 
         # extract cookies from Set-Cookie and drop invalid/expired cookies