Depression, self-focused attention, and the negative memory bias.

On the basis of self-regulatory perseveration theory, we hypothesized that the negative memory bias commonly found among depressed people is mediated by excess levels of self-focused attention and thus can be reduced by preventing depressed people from focusing on themselves. In Experiment 1, nondepressed and subclinically depressed college students were induced to either focus on themselves or externally and then to recall 10 events that had happened to themselves during the previous 2 weeks. Consistent with our hypotheses, events recalled by depressed Ss were more negative than events recalled by nondepressed Ss under conditions of self-focus but not under conditions of external focus. We conducted Experiment 2 to determine whether this effect was specific to self-referent events or generalizable to events that happened to other people. Experiment 2's findings replicated the previous findings for self-referent events but showed a different pattern for recall of events that happened to others, suggesting that self-focus reduces the negative memory bias among depressed individuals by deactivating their self-schemas. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Focus of attention mediates the impact of negative affect on altruism.

An experiment with 36 undergraduates tested whether the relationship between negative affect and altruism is mediated by focus of attention. Ss were asked to imagine that a close friend was terminally ill. They were told to attend either to their own reactions or to the reactions of the dying friend. Ss in these conditions did not differ in self-reported negative mood. Moreover, they were "sadder" than Ss in a control condition, who imagined a nontragic event. When subsequently given the opportunity to be anonymous altruists, the other-focused Ss were significantly more helpful than either the self-focused or control Ss. It is suggested that negative moods facilitate altruism among people who are attending to the problems of others, but not among people who attend to their own needs, concerns, and losses. The ethical implications of experiments inducing powerful negative affects are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of negative moods on self-enhancing cognitions: The role of reflective versus ruminative mood orientations.

This research program examined how self-focused attention to feelings affects the relation between mood negativity and self-enhancing thought. The primary hypothesis was that the particular manner in which people focus on their moods (reflective vs. ruminative) determines whether they reveal positive (i.e., mood-incongruent) or negative (i.e., mood-congruent) self-relevant thoughts in response to negative moods. Studies 1-4 revealed that social comparisons, temporal comparisons, and other self-enhancing cognitions (i.e., attributions, disidentification, relationship evaluations) are more likely to be mood incongruent when people adopt a reflective orientation to their negative feelings and more likely to be mood congruent when they adopt a ruminative orientation. Additionally, moods and mood orientations affected self-enhancing thoughts through the mediating influence of mood regulation goals and intentions (Studies 5 and 6). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of suppressing a negative autobiographical memory on concurrent intrusions and subsequent autobiographical recall in dysphoria.

Depressed individuals endeavor to suppress intrusive thoughts and memories as a form of mood control. Two predictions from this literature were examined. The 1st was that attempts to suppress a preselected negative memory during a stream-of-consciousness (SOC) task in dysphoric individuals, relative to a no-suppress condition, would lead to relatively speeded access to other negative but not positive memories on a subsequent cue-word recall task. No such effects were predicted for nondysphoric controls. The 2nd prediction was that, across all participants who were asked to suppress memories, higher levels of depressed mood would be associated with more intrusions of the to-be-suppressed memory during the SOC and that this association would be stronger than the comparable relation in participants who were not asked to suppress memories. Results support both predictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect.

Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjuction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of temporal landmarks in autobiographical memory processes

The prevalence of temporal landmarks has been revealed in a wide range of tasks associated with autobiographical memory, such as recall and dating of personal events. The author examined 3 types of events that have usually been considered landmarks: flashbulb memories, 1st experiences, and reference points in personal histories. The differences between landmark events and nonlandmark events are considered, and evidence is presented showing the effect of these landmarks on memory tasks. It is suggested that the effect of temporal landmarks on these tasks is twofold: (a) performance on the tasks is intricately linked with how our autobiographical memory system is structured, and temporal landmarks may play a critical role in this organization; and (b) landmarks may be actively and spontaneously used by individuals as cues when performing recall and dating tasks (the cuing hypothesis). Both of these factors serve to systematically bias performance, leading to robust phenomena such as calendar effects and reminiscence peaks in recall and improvements in accuracy in dating.     

Self-focused attention and negative affect: A meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis synthesized 226 effect sizes reflecting the relation between self-focused attention and negative affect (depression, anxiety, negative mood). The results demonstrate the multifaceted nature of self-focused attention and elucidate major controversies in the field. Overall, self-focus was associated with negative affect. Several moderators qualified this relationship. Self-focus and negative affect were more strongly related in clinical and female-dominated samples. Rumination yielded stronger effect sizes than nonruminative self-focus. Self-focus on positive self-aspects and following a positive event were related to lower negative affect. Most important, an interaction between foci of self-attention and form of negative affect was found: Private self-focus was more strongly associated with depression and generalized anxiety, whereas public self-focus was more strongly associated with social anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of motives in the content and structure of autobiographical memory.

Findings from 4 studies suggest that differentiation and integration are used by individuals high in agency and communion to structure motive-related information in episodic memory. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that agentic and communal individuals recalled more emotional experiences related to their motives, and that agentic individuals used more differentiation whereas communal individuals used more integration to structure these memories. Study 3 showed that agentic and communal individuals used more differentiation and integration to structure memories about social separation and connection, respectively. Study 4 demonstrated a similar pattern of recall in an experimentally controlled retrieval task. For a motive-congruent topic, agentic individuals recognized more differentiated information and had fewer differentiation recognition errors, and communal individuals freely recalled more integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New perspectives on autobiographical memory: The integration of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning.

Researchers from diverse psychological subdisciplines have increasingly turned their attention to the storied aspect of human thought. Narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning are 2 forms of this conscious thought. Narrative processing is the tendency to create thought units that use vivid imagery, sequential plots, characters, and salient goals. Autobiographical reasoning consists of interpreting and evaluating remembered experiences. Both forms of thought are discussed in D. P. McAdams's (see record 2001-06545-002) personality theory and D. B. Pillemer's (see record 2001-06545-003) cognitive research. S. Bluck and T. Habermas (see record 2001-06545-004) highlight developmental aspects of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning, particularly in adolescent identity formation. U. M. Staudinger (see record 2001-06545-005) illustrates how autobiographical reasoning about memories and life stories serves as a springboard for wisdom at different stages of the life cycle. Implications for integrating subdisciplines of psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory and depression: The role of executive control.

It has been widely established that depressed mood states and clinical depression, as well as a range of other psychiatric disorders, are associated with a relative difficulty in accessing specific autobiographical information in response to emotion-related cue words on an Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; J. M. G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986). In 8 studies the authors examined the extent to which this relationship is a function of impaired executive control associated with these mood states and clinical disorders. Studies 1-4 demonstrated that performance on the AMT is associated with performance on measures of executive control, independent of depressed mood. Furthermore, Study 1 showed that executive control (as measured by verbal fluency) mediated the relationship between both depressed mood and a clinical diagnosis of eating disorder and AMT performance. Using a stratified sample in Study 5, the authors confirmed the positive association between depressed mood and impaired performance on the AMT. Studies 6-8 involved experimental manipulations of the parameters of the AMT designed to further indicate that reduced executive control is to a significant extent driving the relationship between depressed mood and AMT performance. The potential role of executive control in accounting for other aspects of the AMT literature is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of induced moods on voice affect.

Happy or sad moods were experimentally induced in 30 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders using a frequently employed mood-induction technique. Voice affect (with verbal content filtered out) was found to be significantly happier during the positive mood induction than during a baseline neutral condition. Voice affect was significantly sadder during the negative mood induction only for the youngest age group (1st graders). Results support the validity of mood-induction techniques with young children. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The joys of helping: Focus of attention mediates the impact of positive affect on altruism.

30 undergraduates were assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions: (a) self-oriented positive affect, (b) other-oriented positive affect, or (c) an affectively neutral control. These states were induced by a tape-recorded hypnoticlike induction, and the affects were confirmed through a mood checklist and a writing task. Ss were left unsupervised and had been asked to work on a difficult multiple-choice test as a favor to a "friend" of the researcher upon completion of their other tasks. The number of items completed on this test was taken as a measure of altruism. The results indicate that joy experienced for the self promotes altruism, whereas emphatic joy retards it. The authors develop a view of emotion that emphasizes its resultant attentional and cognitive components, incorporating data of a previous experiment on egocentric and emphatic sadness. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of overt attention in emotion-modulated memory.

The presence of emotional stimuli results in a central/peripheral tradeoff effect in memory: memory for central details is enhanced at the cost of peripheral items. It has been assumed that emotion-modulated differences in memory are the result of differences in attention, but this has not been tested directly. The present experiment used eye movement monitoring as an index of overt attention allocation and mediation analysis to determine whether differences in attention were related to subsequent memory. Participants viewed negative and neutral scenes surrounded by three neutral objects and were then given a recognition memory test. The results revealed evidence in support of a central/peripheral tradeoff in both attention and memory. However, contrary with previous assumptions, whereas attention partially mediated emotion-enhanced memory for central pictures, it did not explain the entire relationship. Further, although centrally presented emotional stimuli led to decreased number of eye fixations toward the periphery, these differences in viewing did not contribute to emotion-impaired memory for specific details pertaining to the periphery. These findings suggest that the differential influence of negative emotion on central versus peripheral memory may result from other cognitive influences in addition to overt visual attention or on postencoding processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual standards and reactions to pornography: Enhancing behavioral consistency through self-focused attention.

Reports 3 studies which tested the hypothesis, derived from self-awareness theory, that behavior would be more consistent with personal attitudes or standards when attention was self-focused. In the 1st study, 52 male undergraduates' attitudes toward erotica were measured, and 1 mo later the Ss were asked to rate pictures of nude women, while either self-focused (in front of a mirror) or not. There was little relationship between pretested attitudes and reactions toward the pictures for the non-self-focused group; however, the same relationship was very strong for the group that rated pictures in front of a mirror. In the 2nd and 3rd studies, female Ss (51 and 48 undergraduates, respectively) were first pretested on the Mosher Sex-Guilt Scale. Two weeks later they read and rated pornographic passages, again, while either self-focused or not. The relationship between pretested standards (sex guilt) and reactions to sexual literature was weak in the non-self-aware condition, but considerably stronger for the self-focused Ss. Results suggest that focusing attention upon the self tends to inhibit behaviors that are inconsistent with personal attitudes or standards. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: The role of negative affect.

Despite the importance of understanding the emotional aspects of organizational decision making, prior research has paid scant attention to the role of emotion in escalation of commitment. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between negative affect and escalation of commitment. Results showed that regardless of whether negative affect was measured as a dispositional trait (Neuroticism) in Studies 1 and 2 or as a transient mood state in Study 3, it was negatively correlated with escalation tendency when one was personally responsible for a prior decision. This pattern of results is consistent with the predictions derived from the coping perspective, suggesting that people seek to escape from the unpleasant emotions that are associated with escalation situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of performance expectancy and self-focused attention on social interaction.

Investigated the impact of performance expectancies and self-focused attention on social performance in mixed-sex dyads of 48 undergraduate men with self-reported moderate social anxiety on a modified Social Avoidance and Distress Scale. Ss were divided into 2 groups on the basis of their high or low performance expectancies. Ss were asked to respond to several self-report questionnaires before and after making a telephone call lasting 4–5 min to a female confederate for the purpose of getting acquainted. Results show that half of the Ss in each expectancy group performed in the presence of a self-focusing stimulus (video-camera). When anxiety level was controlled for, focus of attention alone had a very limited effect on performance. Expectancy had a significant influence on social performance, but only if Ss were self-focused. Thus confident Ss were rated by judges as more socially skilled than were doubtful Ss, but only when the camera was present. The interaction between these variables parallels previous research by C. S. Carver et al (see record 1980-32489-001) and Carver and M. F. Scheier (see record 1980-25774-001) and supports the self-regulation model of Carver and Scheier (1983). (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and posttraumatic stress: Exploring the contributions of impaired executive control and affect regulation.

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memories retrieved to word cues on the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is associated with increased posttraumatic stress in traumatized samples. Theoretical debates concerning the dominant influences on this effect have focused on affect regulation, whereby specific personal information is avoided more by those experiencing greater distress, versus compromised executive control, whereby increased distress is associated with an inability to set aside inappropriately general responses on the AMT. The present study compared these 2 views in a correlational design using a reversed version of the AMT (the AMT-R) for which trauma-exposed participants (N=36) had to generate general memories from the past and avoid specific memories. An emphasis on the role of affect regulation would predict that distress would be associated with reduced specificity (as in the standard AMT), whereas emphasis on the role of executive control would predict that this relationship would be reversed. The data supported the affect regulation account, with greater posttraumatic stress being associated with reduced memory specificity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion processing in the criminal psychopath: The role of attention in emotion-facilitated memory.

The response modulation hypothesis specifies that low-anxious psychopathic individuals have difficulty processing information outside their primary attentional focus. To evaluate the applicability of this model to affective processing, the authors had 239 offenders, classified with the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (G. Welsh, 1956), perform 1 of 3 emotion memory tasks that examined the effects of emotion on memory for primary and contextual information. Regardless of anxiety level, psychopathic and control offenders demonstrated a significant and comparable memory bias for emotional over neutral words in the primary conditions. However, psychopathic individuals showed significantly less memory bias than did controls in the contextual conditions. Results indicate that the impact of emotion on memory is moderated by attentional factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of attention and relatedness in emotionally enhanced memory.

Examining the positive and negative pictures separately revealed that emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for positive pictures was mediated by attention, with no significant influence of emotional arousal, whereas the reverse was true of negative pictures. Consistent with this finding, in Experiment 2 EEM for negative pictures was found even when task emphasis was manipulated so that equivalent attention was allocated to negative and neutral pictures. The results show that attention and semantic relatedness contribute to EEM, with the extent varying with emotional valence. Negative emotion can influence memory independently of these 2 factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)