Influence of congruency and social episodic memory on subsequent social decision-making

Research shows strong impacts of congruency on memory for social information, but whether memory advantages emerge for congruent or incongruent information is inconsistent. Social targets can have congruency between their facial expression (e.g., smiling, frowning) and behaviors (e.g., helping, hurting). The current study investigated the impact of congruency between valence of facial expressions and behaviors on memory and approach/avoidance (AA) decisions. At encoding (i.e., impression formation), participants formed positive or negative impressions of social targets. Social targets were represented by a picture with a positive or negative facial expression and a congruent or incongruent positive or negative behavior. At retrieval, we measured memory for multiple details (impressions, behaviors, facial expression) associated with targets encountered during encoding (impression formation). In a final approach/avoidance phase of the experiment, participants then judged whether they would approach or avoid social targets based on what they remembered about targets. Results showed that impression memory and behavior memory affected subsequent AA decisions, with correct memory for positive and negative impressions leading to approach and avoidance decisions, respectively. However, there was no impact of expression memory on AA decisions, suggesting participants did not base their decisions on irrelevant expression information. Further, results showed no effect of congruency on impression memory, behavior memory, or AA decisions, and limited impact on expression memory. Overall, findings may cast doubt on congruency/incongruency effects found in prior memory-related work, possibly suggesting an impact of the task.