ABSTRACT

How does memory for the public past differ from memory for the personal past? Across five experiments (N = 457), we found that memories of the personal past were characterised by a positivity bias, whereas memories of the public past were characterised by a negativity bias. This valence-based dissociation emerged regardless of how far back participants recounted the personal and public past, whether or not participants were asked to think about significant events, how much time participants were given to retrieve relevant personal and public memories, and also generalised across various demographic categories, including gender, age, and political affiliation. Along with recent work demonstrating a similar dissociation in the context of future thinking, our findings suggest that personal and public event cognition fundamentally differ in terms of access to emotionally salient events. Direct comparisons between personal and public event memory should represent a fruitful avenue for research on event cognition.

摘要

对公共过去的记忆与对个人过去的记忆有何不同？在五个实验中（N = 457），我们发现个人过去的记忆具有积极偏见的特征，而公共过去的记忆则具有消极偏见的特征。无论参与者讲述个人和公共过去多远，参与者是否被要求考虑重大事件，参与者有多少时间来检索相关的个人和公共记忆，以及在各种人口统计类别，包括性别、年龄和政治派别。除了最近的工作在未来思维的背景下显示出类似的分离外，我们的研究结果表明，个人和公共事件认知在获得情感显着事件方面存在根本差异。