Does a person selectively recall the good or the bad from their personal past? It depends on the recall target and the person's favourability of self-views.
In three studies, participants remembered real-life behaviours at Time 1 and attempted to recall them at Time 2. When the recall target was the self, a positivity bias emerged: self-positivity. In Study 3, self-positivity extended to an individual (target) who was liked by the participant, but did it not extend to a disliked target. For this latter target, a negativity bias emerged. For recall targets that were participants' acquaintances, self-positivity in recall was also eliminated in Studies 1 and 3, and a negativity bias in recall emerged in Study 2. Finally, in Study 2 (but not Study 3), the favourability of participants' self-view predicted the magnitude of the self-positivity in self-recall, but it did not predict valence effects in other-recall. Taken together, the results indicate that the link between behaviour valence and recall is moderated by the recall target and the favourability of one's self-view.
a Department of Psychology , Saint Xavier University , Chicago , IL , USA.
Timothy D
TD
Ritchie
b Center for Research on Self and Identity, Psychology Department , University of Southampton , UK.
Constantine
C
Sedikides
c Department of Psychology , Northern Illinois University , DeKalb , IL , USA.
John J
JJ
Skowronski
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D012649:Self Concept; D055815:Young Adult
Autobiographical memory; recall positivity bias; self; self-positivity