Self-esteem modulates directed forgetting of emotional social feedback

According to self-motivation theories and the mnemic neglect mechanism, differences in self-esteem levels lead to memory bias for social feedback of different valences, and may enable self-esteem to moderate individuals' directed forgetting of social feedback. However, this hypothesis has not been tested in previous studies. To address this, the present study employed two behavioral experiments to examine the moderating effect of self-esteem on directed forgetting of social feedback.

In Experiment 1, a directed forgetting paradigm involving valenced (positive or negative) social feedback was used to compare individuals with high versus low self-esteem. Based on Experiment 1, Experiment 2 added a mutual evaluation phase and incorporated intensity information into the valence dimension of social feedback, to further examine the effect of self-esteem on directed forgetting of social feedback.

The results of Experiment 1 showed that while self-esteem influenced selective memory of social feedback via a mnemic neglect mechanism, it did not significantly affect directed forgetting. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that self-esteem significantly moderated directed forgetting, with this effect being intensity-dependent rather than valence-dependent. Specifically, participants with high self-esteem exhibited directed forgetting for neutral and high-intensity feedback (both negative and positive), while showing a reversed pattern for low-intensity negative feedback. By comparison, low‑self‑esteem individuals exhibited no evidence of directed forgetting for emotional social feedback, pointing to new avenues for interventions aimed at social barriers in this population.

Self-esteem can moderate the directed forgetting of social feedback, yet this moderating effect is subject to boundary conditions. Compared with the valence bias and mnemic neglect mechanisms, self-concept integration and updating provide a more compelling account of the conditional moderating effect of self-esteem on the directed forgetting of social feedback.