Accessibility of observable and unobservable characteristics in autobiographical memories of recent and distant past

Abstract

Self-reports regarding how people visualise themselves during events that occurred in the past show that for events from the distant past individuals report assuming a more external perspective than for events from the recent past [Nigro, G., & Neisser, U. (1983). Point of view in personal memories. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 467-482; Pronin, E., & Ross, L. (2006). Temporal differences in trait self-ascription. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 90, 197-209]. Thus it appears that, with the passage of time, representations of self embodied in memories of past events lose their position of an insider and assume a more ordinary position of self as an object seen from the perspective of an outside observer. The purpose of the present experiment was to examine this shift using a performance-based measure of accessibility. Results showed that self-judgements regarding unobservable, covert characteristics were faster for recent-compared to more distant-autobiographical events. However, self-judgements regarding observable, overt characteristics were faster for more distant events. This suggests an accessibility-based mechanism underlying the shift from internal to the relatively more external perspective in forming self-images related to the distant past.

Time Frame Affects Vantage Point in Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory: Evidence from Response Latencies

“…For instance, research shows that, compared to our descriptions of other people, self-descriptions tend to include more privileged, unobservable characteristics – e.g., a person’s internal state such as feeling of joy or shame – that are evident to the individual but more difficult for an external observer to ascertain (McGuire and McGuire, 1988; Prentice, 1990; Andersen et al, 1998; Vazire and Mehl, 2008; Vazire, 2010). A similar pattern of results has been demonstrated for accessibility of unobservable and observable aspects of self-descriptions (Karylowski and Ranieri, 2006; Mrozinski and Karylowski, 2011; Karylowski and Mrozinski, 2017). Specifically, making self-judgments on trait-labels preceded by a verb referring to an internal perspective, such as feel (e.g., feels happy, feels sophisticated, etc.)…”

“…Half of the participants ( N = 48) were assigned to the episodic memory condition and the other half to the semantic memory condition. For the episodic memory condition, the procedure was modeled on the procedure in Karylowski and Mrozinski (2017). Participants in that condition were asked to make judgments regarding how they were feeling and how they acted in two social situations from their past.…”

“…Responses were provided on a two-point (Yes/No) scale using “A” and “L” keys on a standard keyboard with the assignment of the two keys counterbalanced across participants. The use of a two-point scale constituted a departure from how accessibility was measured in the previous experiment (Karylowski and Mrozinski, 2017) which employed a five-point Likert-type scale. While the five-point scale has an advantage of providing a more precise measure of the degree of participants’ endorsement of a given item, its use in assessing accessibility is controversial (cf., Fazio, 1990).…”

“…Specifically, it does not occur, or is less pronounced, in autobiographical memories when the self is represented in the context of events that occurred in a relatively distant past, i.e., years rather than days (Nigro and Neisser, 1983; McIsaac and Eich, 2002; Piolino et al, 2002; Talarico et al, 2004; Berntsen and Rubin, 2006; Pronin and Ross, 2006; Rice and Rubin, 2009; Sutin and Robins, 2010; Karylowski and Mrozinski, 2017). This effect of time of the event on how the self is represented in memory appears to be robust; it has been reported for different age groups and for both pleasant and unpleasant memories, thus suggesting that with the passage of time self-representations lose their position of an insider and become more compatible with how others are typically represented.…”

“…The only exception is an experiment by Karylowski and Mrozinski (2017) in which performance-based measures of accessibility of observable and unobservable aspects of self-representation were collected for both recent and distant episodic autobiographical memories. Results showed that self-judgments regarding unobservable characteristics were faster than self-judgments regarding observable characteristics for recent but not for distant episodic autobiographical memories.…”