Although the present study supports previous literature showing a boost in memory for self-referenced information, the increase in false alarms, especially in older adults, highlights the potential for memory errors, particularly for information that is strongly related to the self.

The present study examines source memory for actions (e.g. placing items in a suitcase). For both young and older adult participants, source memory for actions performed by the self was better than memory for actions performed by either a known (close) or unknown other. In addition, neither young nor older adults were more likely to confuse self with close others than unknown others. Results suggest an advantage in source memory for actions performed by the self compared to others, possibly associated with sensorimotor cues that are relatively preserved in aging.

Stigma may differ depending on the timing of group-membership entry, whether a person was “born that way” or “became that way.” Disability, a highly understudied minority group, varies on this domain. Three studies demonstrated that congenital disability is more stigmatized than acquired disability and essentialism and blame moderate and mediate this effect. Congenital disability was more stigmatized than the acquired version of the same disability (Studies 1–2). People with congenital disability were more essentialized, but less blamed than people with acquired disability (Study 2). Manipulating onset and essentialism revealed that when disability was acquired, low essentialism predicted greater stigma through blame (Study 3). However, when disability was congenital, essentialism did not affect stigma through blame. For stigmatized groups unlikely to be blamed for their group membership, reducing essentialism could ameliorate stigma, but for groups that might be blamed for their group membership, increasing essentialism may be a tool to reduce stigma by reducing blame.

Although engagement of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) underlies self-referencing of information for younger and older adults, the region has not consistently been implicated across age groups for the encoding of self-referenced information. We sought to determine whether making judgments about others as well as the self influenced findings in the previous study. During an fMRI session, younger and older adults encoded adjectives using only a self-reference task. For items later remembered compared to those later forgotten, both age groups robustly recruited medial prefrontal cortex, indicating common neural regions support encoding across younger and older adults when participants make only self-reference judgments. Focal age differences emerged in regions related to emotional processing and cognitive control, though these differences are more limited than in tasks in which judgments also are made about others. We conclude that making judgments about another person differently affects the ways that younger and older adults make judgments about the self, with results of a follow-up behavioral study supporting this interpretation.