title: Feeling good and bad about the past and future self.
abstract: Prior research has shown that memories of feeling good about the self often focus on achievement themes, whereas memories of feeling bad about the self often focus on interpersonal themes. This study examined whether a similar relationship would be evident for imagined future events. Young adults in the United States and Denmark provided memories and imagined future events that are associated with positive or negative self-regard. Across cultures, achievement themes were prominently represented in memories of positive self-regard and interpersonal themes were prominently represented in memories of negative self-regard. In contrast, relationships between the emotional valence and thematic content of imagined future events were weak and inconsistent. Our results raise new questions for the theory that imagined future episodes are constructed primarily from recombinations of past episodes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. david.pillemer@unh.edu
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Pillemer
authors.forename: Dorthe
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Thomsen
authors.forename: Kie J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Kuwabara
authors.forename: Zorana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ivcevic
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003718:Denmark; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D012649:Self Concept; D014481:United States