Research to date has paid remarkably little heed to gender differences in autobiographical memory. To redress this, the author examined memory for childhood events in adult men and women remembering back to childhood, and in children themselves. Five studies were conducted, and results revealed that females consistently recalled more childhood memories than males did and were generally faster in accessing the memories recalled. Furthermore, the gender difference observed was specific to memories of events associated with emotion and was apparent across a diverse range of emotions experienced by both the self and others. The overall pattern of findings obtained is consistent with the proposition that gender-differentiated socialization processes influence the content and complexity of representations of autobiographical emotional events in memory. To some extent, then, autobiographical memory appears to be a socially constructed phenomenon.

Fundamental to the concept of repression is the proposition that repression serves to keep painful, unpleasant experiences out of consciousness or awareness. If this is indeed true, then individuals who characteristically use repression as a defensive strategy should have less access to emotional memories, especially those of negative, unpleasant events. The three studies presented here address this proposition. Repressers, operationally defined by a pattern of low anxiety and high defensiveness, displayed a limited accessibility to personal, real-life affective memories that was particularly pronounced for fear and self-consciousness experiences. Furthermore, recall of emotional experiences of self versus other revealed that the effects of repression were specific to emotional experiences of the self. The overall pattern of findings suggests that repression may be motivated, in particular, by affective experiences that focus attention on the self in a threatening or evaluative way.The notion that repression serves the defensive function of keeping painful, unpleasant experiences out of consciousness or awareness is fundamental to theoretical conceptualizations of repression (

The fundamental assumption that repression involves an inaccessibility to affective memories has not been directly addressed in empirical research. In the present study we examined three groups of subjects (repressors, low anxious, and high anxious) under six conditions of recall (general, happy, sad, anger, fear, and wonder). Subjects were asked to recall personal experiences from childhood and to rate their current mood and the affective intensity of the memories. The results indicated that repressors recalled significantly fewer negative memories than did low-anxious and high-anxious subjects and, furthermore, that they were substantially older at the time of the earliest negative memory recalled. Compared with low-anxious subjects, repressors also recalled fewer positive affective memories as well. This pattern of findings is consistent with the hypothesis that repression involves an inaccessibility to negative emotional memories and indicates further that repression is associated in some way with the suppression or inhibition of emotional experiences in general. The concept of repression as a process involving limited access to negative affective memories appears to be valid.

Much evidence indicates that self-compassion is related to a wide range of positive outcomes, yet remarkably little is known as to the origins of self-compassion. Here we present two studies that investigate the potential origins of individual differences in self-compassion. In Study 1, participants' (N ¼ 329) recall of high parental rejection and overprotection, and low parental warmth in childhood predicted low self-compassion, and this was mediated by attachment anxiety. Attachment avoidance did not mediate any association. Study 2 (N ¼ 32) extended this crosssectional study by experimentally enhancing attachment security, which led to an increase in state self-compassion. Results suggest that early childhood experiences and attachment may influence the development of self-compassion.

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