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Affective Responses to Autobiographical Memories and Their Relationship to Long‐Term Goals
Author(s) -
Singer Jefferson A.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00242.x
Subject(s) - psychology , relevance (law) , gratification , affect (linguistics) , autobiographical memory , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , childhood amnesia , cognition , childhood memory , episodic memory , recall , communication , neuroscience , political science , law
It was hypothesized that affective responses to memories could be predicted from a memory's relevance to the attainment or nonattainment of an individual's long‐term goals. In Study 1, 30 subjects received 15 goals, based upon Murray's (1938) needs, as cues to retrieve memories. They rated both affective responses to memories and the relevance of the memories to the attainment of the cuing goal. On average, affective responses were significantly correlated with the relevance of the memories to goal attainment. In Study 2, 62 subjects retrieved 20 memories from four different content categories and rated the relevance of each memory to the attainment of all 15 goals. Factor analysis yielded three goal factors—avoidance, self‐gratification, and academic accomplishment. Depending upon the memory content (family, friends, school, or activities), memories varied in how much the affect they evoked was related to the attainment of particular goals. Goals played a differentiated role in subjects' current affect about past events.