The Role of Motives in the Content and Structure of Autobiographical Memory

TitleThe Role of Motives in the Content and Structure of Autobiographical Memory
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1999
AuthorsBarbara Woike, Irina Gershkovich, Rebecca Piorkowski, Marilyn Polo
JournalJournal of Personality & Social Psychology
Volume76
Issue4
Pagination600-612
ISSN00223514
Abstract

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.

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