title: Voluntary and involuntary emotional memory following an analogue traumatic stressor: the differential effects of communality in men and women.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Men and women show differences in performance on emotional processing tasks. Sex also interacts with personality traits to affect information processing. Here we examine effects of sex, and two personality traits that are differentially expressed in men and women - instrumentality and communality - on voluntary and involuntary memory for distressing video-footage.
  
  
  METHODS
  On session one, participants (n = 39 men; 40 women) completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, which assesses communal and instrumental traits. After viewing film-footage of death/serious injury, participants recorded daily involuntary memories (intrusions) relating to the footage on an online diary for seven days, returning on day eight for a second session to perform a voluntary memory task relating to the film.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Communality interacted with sex such that men with higher levels of communality reported more frequent involuntary memories. Alternatively, a communality × sex interaction reflected a tendency for women with high levels of communality to perform more poorly on the voluntary recognition memory task.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study involved healthy volunteers with no history of significant psychological disorder. Future research with clinical populations will help to determine the generalizability of the current findings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Communality has separate effects on voluntary and involuntary emotional memory. We suggest that high levels of communality in men and women may confer vulnerability to the negative effects of stressful events either through the over-encoding of sensory/perceptual-information in men or the reduced encoding of contextualised, verbally-based, voluntarily accessible representations in women.
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Electronic address: sunjeev.kamboj@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sunjeev K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Kamboj
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Lucy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Oldfield
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Alana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Loewenberger
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Ravi K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Das
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bisby
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Chris R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Brewin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009862:Online Systems; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Communality; Emotional memory; Femininity; Gender; Intrusive memory; Involuntary memory; PTSD