Self-serving episodic memory biases: findings in the repressive coping style.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Memory Research

Background:

• Repressive coping is characterized by low anxiety but high defensiveness and arousal.
• Repressors exhibit impaired recall of negative autobiographical memories and can suppress negative stimuli.
• Previous research indicates spontaneous forgetting of negative information in repressors, particularly after a delay.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if repressors exhibit reduced episodic memory for negative self-relevant information after a delay.
• To determine if self-relevance potentiates delayed forgetting in repressors.
• To test the hypothesis that repressors show exaggerated memory reduction for negative self-relevant information after a delay.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments tested 300 participants categorized as repressors, high-anxious (HA), low-anxious, or defensive HA individuals.
• Participants incidentally encoded positive and negative adjectives based on self-descriptiveness.
• Free recall was assessed immediately, after a 2-day delay, or after a 2-day delay with priming.

Main Results:

• In immediate recall, repressors showed a bias against recalling negative self-relevant words.
• This bias was absent in delayed recall, both with and without priming.
• Contrary to hypotheses, negative self-relevant information was not forgotten at a higher rate after a delay in repressors.

Conclusions:

• The findings do not support the hypothesis of exaggerated delayed forgetting of negative self-relevant information in repressors.
• Repressors may reinterpret negative self-relevant information positively over time.
• This reinterpretation may eliminate the need for recall biases after a delay.