Autobiographical memories and views of the future: In relation to dysphoria

The present study investigated dysphoric individuals' self‐referential processing of autobiographical memories and future personal events, in relation to specificity and response latency. Dysphoric individuals (n  =  17) and nondysphoric controls (n  =  17) were selected from a larger sample based on self‐reported depression. Participants completed an autobiographical memory task (AMT) and a future event task (FET), using pleasant and unpleasant (anxiety‐relevant, depression‐relevant) emotional word cues. In response to each emotional cue, participants were required to access and write down a specific personal memory and future event, respectively. Consistent with the hypotheses, dysphoric individuals were less specific in describing pleasant and unpleasant experiences (particularly pleasant), irrespective of time condition. As expected, dysphoric individuals' specificity for distinct depression‐relevant and anxiety‐relevant experiences did not differ significantly. As predicted, all participants were less specific in describing future personal events than in recalling personal memories. As predicted, dysphoric individuals took longer to think of pleasant memories and pleasant future experiences than controls but, as expected, groups did not differ significantly on mean reaction times for past and future unpleasant experiences. Overall, the data showed a degree of consistency in participants' past and future‐oriented processing of self‐referential material. Although considerable research has investigated autobiographical memories in relation to emotional disturbance, the present findings suggest that constructing future emotional experiences is also an important aspect of mental health.     

Culture, ethnicity, and children's facial expressions: a study of European American, Mainland Chinese, Chinese American, and adopted Chinese girls

This investigation extends previous research documenting differences in Chinese and European American infants' facial expressivity. Chinese girls adopted by European American families, nonadopted Mainland Chinese girls, nonadopted Chinese American girls, and nonadopted European American girls responded to emotionally evocative slides and an odor stimulus. European American girls smiled more than Mainland Chinese and Chinese American girls and scored higher than Mainland Chinese girls for disgust-related expressions and overall expressivity. Adopted Chinese girls produced more disgust-related expressions than Mainland Chinese girls. Self-reported maternal strictness, aggravation, positive expressiveness, and cultural identification correlated with children's facial responses, as did number of siblings and adults in the home. Results suggest that culture and family environment influences facial expressivity, creating differences among children of the same ethnicity.     

Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant,unpleasant, and neutral pictures

Emotional events tend to be remembered better than nonemotional events. We investigated this phenomenon by measuring two event-related potential (ERP) effects: the emotion effect (more positive ERPs for pleasant or unpleasant stimuli than for neutral stimuli) and the subsequent memory effect (more positive ERPs for subsequently remembered items than for subsequently forgotten items). ERPs were measured while subjects rated the emotional content of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. As was expected, subsequent recall was better for pleasant and unpleasant pictures than for neutral pictures. The emotion effect was sensitive to arousal in parietal electrodes and to both arousal and valence in frontocentral electrodes. The subsequent memory effect at centroparietal electrodes was greater for emotional pictures than for neutral pictures during an early epoch (400-600 msec). This result suggests that emotional information has privileged access to processing resources, possibly leading to better memory formation.     

Autobiographical memory: unpleasantness fades faster than pleasantness over time

We examined the effects of retention intervals on the recollection of the emotional content of events. Memory for personal events was tested for three retention intervals: 3 months, 1 year, and 4.5 years. Participants made pleasantness ratings both at the time of recording the event and during testing of the events. Analyses of the data show that judgments of pleasantness or unpleasantness of an event became less extreme as retention interval increased. This effect was larger for unpleasant events than for pleasant events. Subsequent memory ratings of pleasant and unpleasant events showed a modest effect of pleasantness with pleasant events remembered slightly better than unpleasant events. The theoretical implications of these data are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Affect, pain, and autobiographical memory

Twenty-five young female undergraduates were tested on two occasions: once when they were experiencing menstrual pain of at least moderate severity and once when they were pain free. On each occasion, Ss rated their current levels of pain and affect and retrieved real-life events from their personal past. At the end of the second occasion, Ss were reminded of all of the events they had retrieved on either occasion, and then rated the pleasantness of these events at the time of their original occurrence. Results revealed that the impact of pain on autobiographical memory was wholly mediated by its influence on mood. That is, pain impeded access to memories of pleasant personal experiences, whereas it promoted the retrieval of unpleasant events only if pain was accompanied by an increase in unpleasant affect. Discussion centers on the clinical and cognitive implications of the present results, and on prospects for future research.     

Environmental Attention,Affect, and Altruism1

Three experiments were conducted concerning the effect of attention to positive or negative images of the physical environment on altruistic behavior: I. Some subjects listed and described aspects of their residential environments that were particularly pleasant while others described particularly unpleasant aspects. II. Subjects were exposed to slides of either attractive or unattractive outdoor environments. III. Subjects viewed slides of either attractive or unattractive environments while adopting an attentional set that focused only on positive or negative aspects of the slides. After these manipulations, subjects in each experiment encountered an ostensibly unrelated confederate who sought their assistance as a favor. Experiment I subjects who had thought about pleasant environments spent significantly more time helping than those who thought about unpleasant enviornments. Experiment II subjects who saw slides of attractive environments offered significantly more aid for a longer time period than subjects who saw slides of unattractive environments. Experiment III subjects who focused on positive aspects of attractive enviornments gave more help than subjects who focused on negative aspects of attractive environments, though overall differences were not significant. Attentional set produced no differential helping effects in subjects who had viewed unattractive environments. In all three experiments mood or affect was discussed as mediating the impact of environments on behavior.     

Reactions in Psychotherapy

The Pollyanna Principle states that people process pleasant information more accurately and efficiently than less pleasant information. This study examined whether different measures of Pollyanna tendencies are correlated with each other. Fourteen measures of Pollyannaism were derived for 133 students. The results showed that subjects who rated themselves as optimistic or happy also showed Pollyannaism on other measures of happiness, believed that the events in their lives were pleasant, gave themselves positive ratings on personality characteristics, recalled pleasant words more often than unpleasant words, supplied more free associations to pleasant stimuli than to unpleasant stimuli, listed pleasant items first, and judged that pleasant words were more frequent in the English language.     

Individual differences in Pollyannaism

The Pollyanna Principle states that people process pleasant information more accurately and efficiently than less pleasant information. This study examined whether different measures of Pollyanna tendencies are correlated with each other. Fourteen measures of Pollyannaism were derived for 133 students. The results showed that subjects who rated themselves as optimistic or happy also showed Pollyannaism on other measures of happiness, believed that the events in their lives were pleasant, gave themselves positive ratings on personality characteristics, recalled pleasant words more often than unpleasant words, supplied more free associations to pleasant stimuli than to unpleasant stimuli, listed pleasant items first, and judged that pleasant words were more frequent in the English language.     

How probable is probably? It depends on whom you're talking about

Two studies tested whether people interpreted verbal chance terms in a self‐serving manner. Participants read statements describing the likelihood of events in their own future and in the future of a randomly chosen other. They interpreted the chance terms numerically. Chance terms were interpreted as denoting a higher probability when they were used to describe the likelihood of pleasant events in one's own future than when they were used to describe the likelihood of pleasant events in someone else's future (Study 1). Similarly, chance terms were interpreted as denoting a lower probability when they were used to describe the likelihood of unpleasant events in one's own future than when they were used to describe the likelihood of unpleasant events in someone else's future (Studies 1 and 2). These differences occurred primarily when the risk statements were threatening. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing the Initial Pleasantness for Fading Affect,Fixed Affect,Flourishing Affect,and Flexible Affect Events

Over time, autobiographical memories demonstrate fixed affect (i.e., maintain initial affect), fading affect, flourishing affect (i.e., increased affect), or flexible affect (i.e., change from unpleasant to pleasant or vice versa). Walker and Skowronski argued that events low in initial pleasantness are more likely to exhibit flourishing affect and flexible affect and that unpleasant events are more likely to demonstrate flexible affect than pleasant events. However, because of the low frequency of flourishing affect and flexible affect events in individual studies, research had not examined differences between these event categories. The present study examined initial pleasantness ratings for fading affect, fixed affect, flourishing affect, and flexible affect events across four published studies. We expected and generally found lower initial pleasantness for flourishing affect and flexible affect events than for fading affect and fixed affect events. Implications are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Characteristics of personally important episodic memories,counterfactual thoughts,and future projections across age and culture

We have limited knowledge as to whether the phenomenological differences between episodic memories, counterfactuals, and future projections show the same pattern across age groups and diverse samples. Here we compared the characteristics of these mental events, reported by younger and older participants in a Turkish (Study 1) and in an American sample (Study 2). In both studies, memories contained more sensory-perceptual-spatial details, were easier to bring to mind, and more specific. Future projections were the most positive, whereas counterfactuals were the least emotionally intense. In Study 1, older participants rated the events more positively and experienced them with more perceptual detail, whereas younger participants reported the future to be more voluntarily rehearsed, important, and central. These age differences did not replicate in Study 2. Overall, phenomenological differences between the events are robust and replicate across diverse samples. However, age differences are more sensitive to cultural or individual differences.     

Memory for unique personal events: Effects of pleasantness

College students recorded unique personal events for a 3-month period. At the time of recording, they rated the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the event. Subsequent memory ratings showed no effect of type of affect (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant events) but a strong influence of intensity of affect. In contrast, the data for estimating the date of occurrence of events showed an effect of type of affect, with pleasant events estimated more accurately than unpleasant events. A detailed analysis of the data indicated that the effect could not be attributed to the predictability of pleasant events. A red-letter day effect was proposed as an explanation for the estimation data.     

Adverse Life Events, Coping and Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors in Urban African American Youth

African American youth residing in low income urban neighborhoods are at increased risk of experiencing negative life events in multiple domains, increasing their risk for internalizing and externalizing behaviors. However, little is known about youth’s differential responses to life event stress, or protective processes and coping strategies for urban African American youth exposed to adverse life events. Thus, the present study examined whether variability in predominantly low income, urban African American youth’s responses to life event stress are accounted for by the type of life event experienced or the type of coping strategies used. Participants were a community sample of 353 urban African American youth (52.8 % girls; age range 8–12 years) who participated in the Multiple Opportunities to Reach Excellence (MORE) Project. Youth reported about their experiences with adverse life events, coping strategies, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Results indicated that violent life events were uniquely associated with externalizing behavior, while discrimination and economic stress were uniquely associated with internalizing behavior. The utility of coping strategies varied by gender, such that avoiding problems was protective for girls who experienced violent life events, but not for boys. For boys, exposure to violence was significantly positively associated with externalizing symptoms regardless of the amount of avoiding problems coping used. Findings suggest that interventions to develop coping strategies may need to be gender-specific as well as tailored for the types of stressors common for low income urban youth.     

Effects on incidental memory of affective tone in associated past and future episodes: influence of emotional intelligence

The present study examined the effects of emotion elicited by episodes (past events or expected future events) and the relationship between individual differences in emotional intelligence and memory. Participants' emotional intelligence was assessed on the Japanese version of Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire. They rated the pleasantness of episodes they associated with targets, and then performed unexpected free recall tests. When the targets were associated with episodes that were past events, all participants recalled more of the targets associated with pleasant and unpleasant episodes than those associated with neutral episodes. However, when the targets were associated with episodes expected to occur in the future, only participants with higher emotional intelligence scores recalled more of the targets associated with pleasant and unpleasant episodes. The participants with lower emotional intelligence scores recalled the three target types with similar accuracy. These results were interpreted as showing that emotional intelligence is associated with the processing of targets associated with future episodes as retrieval cues.     

The relationship of gender and achievement to future outlook among African American adolescents

This study examined the connection between future outlook and school achievement among low-income, urban African American adolescents. Eight males and eight females, ranging in age from 14 to 16 years, completed a pen- and-paper questionnaire and two semi-structured interviews assessing the anticipation and expected timing of major life events. Findings suggested gender and achievement differences in adolescents' goals and expectations. Higher achieving girls expressed more future goals and expectations and considered more long-term goals than higher achieving boys and lower achieving girls and boys. Goals and expectations were shaped by family and significant others, who served as models for what to expect in the future. The study highlights the importance of understanding the historical and cultural contexts that may shape adolescents' perceptions of the future.     

Phenomenal characteristics associated with real and imagined events: the effects of event valence and absorption

This study examined the effects of emotional valence of an event and individual differences in absorption on the phenomenal characteristics associated with real and imagined events. Each participant described four events. Two of these were real and two were imagined, with one pleasant and stressful event being generated for each category. Pleasant events (both real and imagined) contained more detail (visual detail, smell, and taste, and more information regarding location, time, etc.) than stressful events. In addition, higher levels of absorption were related to higher ratings for both real and imagined events (for both pleasant and stressful events). Discussion focused on implications for further research in source monitoring and other relevant domains. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tracks and Transitions—A Comparison of Adolescent Future-oriented Goals,Explorations, and Commitments in Australia,Israel, and Finland

It has been suggested that age-related normative demands and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, identity explorations, and commitments. In order to study this, 71 Australian boys and 49 girls, 23 Israeli boys and 23 girls, and 36 Finnish boys and 66 girls aged between 16 and 17 were investigated. They filled in the Hopes and Fears Questionnaire measuring the content and temporal extension of goals, and the Exploration and Commitment Inventory. The results showed that developmental tasks, role transitions, and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, explorations, and commitments. Due to earlier school transitions, Australian adolescents expected that their hopes related to education and work, and education-related concerns, would be realized earlier than Finnish and Israeli youths. In turn, because of military service commitments of several years, Israeli youths expected that both their hopes and fears concerning education would be realized later in life than Australian adolescents. On the other hand, Finnish adolescents expected goals concerning their future family to be actualized earlier than Australian and Israeli youths. They also showed more exploration and commitment concerning their future family than did Australian adolescents.     

The Relationship Between Arousal and the Remembered Duration of Positive Events

The relation between affect and retrospective duration estimation has hardly been examined. In this paper, we contribute to filling this gap by studying the influence of arousal on the remembered duration of positive events. On the basis of the contextual change model, we expected that high‐arousal positive events would be remembered as longer compared with low‐arousal positive events. To test this hypothesis, we set up a naturalistic study in which participants were asked at the end of a pleasant amusement park ride at the local fair to rate how pleasant and aroused they felt during the ride as well as to estimate the ride's duration. Feeling more aroused during a ride was associated with longer estimates of the ride's duration. Results are discussed within the framework of retrospective time estimation models. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.