Open AccessSelf-Serving Bias in Memories
Author(s) -
Yanchi Zhang,
Zhe Pan,
Kai Li,
Yongyu Guo
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
experimental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.631
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 2190-5142
pISSN - 1618-3169
DOI - 10.1027/1618-3169/a000409
Subject(s) - psychology , forgetting , valence (chemistry) , negative information , motivated forgetting , recall , cognitive psychology , attribution , trait , social psychology , self , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language
. 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.