Self-Serving Bias in Memories

Experimental Psychology
Yanchi ZhangYongyu Guo

Abstract

Protecting one's positive self-image from damage is a fundamental need of human beings. Forgetting is an effective strategy in this respect. Individuals show inferior recall of negative feedback about themselves but unimpaired recognition of self-related negative feedback. This discrepancy may imply that individuals retain negative information but forget that the information is associated with the self. In two experiments, participants judged whether two-character trait adjectives (positive or negative) described themselves or others. Subsequently, they completed old-new judgments (Experiment 2) and attribution tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). Neither old-new recognition nor source guessing bias was influenced by word valence. Participants' source memory was worse in the negative self-referenced word processing condition than in the other conditions. These results suggest there is a self-serving bias in memory for the connection between valence information and the self.

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Citations

Nov 20, 2018·Experimental Psychology·Andreas B Eder, Christian Frings
Jul 11, 2020·British Journal of Nursing : BJN·Paul Mahon, Mary O'Neill
May 1, 2020·Experimental Psychology·Andreas B Eder, Christian Frings
Feb 21, 2021·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Diana R PereiraAna P Pinheiro

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