title: Changing the working self alters the emotions prompted by recall.
abstract: Results from three studies indicated that emotional responses to memories can be changed by altering the working self. In particular, these results showed that emotional reactions to memories: (1) were especially positive when memories were perceived to be central to the working self (Experiment 1); (2) were muted when the working self was changed by adopting a third-person perspective during recall (Experiment 1); (3) of an event in the life of each participant's mother weakened when an individual was induced to experience a self that felt less close to their mother (Experiment 2) and (4) of a childhood event provoked especially positive emotional reactions after exposure to a mortality salience manipulation that increased perceived self-worth (Experiment 3). The extent to which mother was included in the self (Experiment 2) and self-worth (Experiment 3) plausibly mediated the effects of the manipulations on participants' emotional reactions to recalled events.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Northern Illinois University , DeKalb , IL , USA.
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Skowronski
authors.forename: Constantine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sedikides
authors.forename: Wenwen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Xinyue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D004532:Ego; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall; D012649:Self Concept; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Autobiographical memory; Emotion; Fading affect bias; Mortality salience; Self