Self-relevance and wishful thinking: facilitation and distortion in source monitoring.
When making source attributions, people tend to attribute desirable statements to reliable sources and undesirable statements to unreliable sources, a phenomenon known as the wishful thinking effect (Gordon, Franklin, & Beck, 2005). In the present study, we examined the influence of wishful thinking on source monitoring for self-relevant information. On one hand, wishful thinking is expected, because self-relevant desires are presumably strong. However, self-relevance is known to confer a memory advantage and may thus provide protection from desire-based biases. In Experiment 1, source memory for self-relevant information was contrasted against source memory for information relevant to others and for neutral information. Results indicated that self-relevant information was affected by wishful thinking and was remembered more accurately than was other information. Experiment 2 showed that the magnitude of the self-relevant wishful thinking effect did not increase with a delay.
Barber
Sarah J
SJ
Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-2500, USA. sarah.barber@sunysb.edu
Gordon
Ruthanna
R
Franklin
Nancy
N
D000339:Affect; D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D003657:Decision Making; D005201:Fantasy; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D011939:Mental Recall; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception; D013850:Thinking