Facets of personality and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory

By David C. Rubin, I. Siegler. 2004

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY The relationship between individual differences in autobiographical memory and personality was examined by having 118 undergraduates complete the NEO Personality Inventory after rating 15 word-cued autobiographical memories on 20 scales. The Openness to Feelings facet (O3) correlated with measures of belief in the accuracy of memories, recollection, sensory imagery and emotion. Four other facets had correlations with belief (A3—Altruism, E1—Warmth, E4—Activity, E6— Positive Emotions). These facets also deal with emotional components of personality. In multiple regressions, measures of belief and measures of recollection were predicted by different variables, and for measures of belief, the O3 facet increased the variance accounted for beyond that of just the cognitive variables. Our results are consistent with and extend studies of the effects of depression and emotional suppression on autobiographical memory. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In clinical psychology, the contents of autobiographical memory are often used to infer and attempt to alter personality. Here we focus on the cognitive processes and phenomenological judgments involved in autobiographical memory rather than on the contents. Given the increase in interest in the effects of individual differences measures related to personality on autobiographical memory (Read & Winograd, 1998), a study examining personality in a broad way would provide a needed base of comparison for more specific investigations. It would be of great practical importance to know if and how differences in personality traits were related to individual differences in memory. To begin such a project we need to commit to a theoretical view of personality and of autobiographical memory that allow both to be measured and interrelated. For personality we use the Five Factor Model (Digman, 1990; John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1999). We view autobiographical memory as an integration of component systems (Rubin, 1998; Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003).

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3c3637bb57d1a5007f1973618edabd373a9e97b

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Dorthe Berntsen
2. David C. Rubin
3. A. Boals

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Dorthe Berntsen
2. David C. Rubin
3. Annette Bohn
4. A. Boals
5. D. Schuettler
6. Jonathan Koppel

Citations in the corpus

• A Basic-Systems Approach to Autobiographical Memory (2005, background): “The following systems play a role in autobiographical memory: individual senses (especially vision, hearing, and smell); a multimodal spatial system, which notes the location of objects and people; emotion; language; a narrative system that keeps track of causal relations but that need not use langu”
• Emotion and vantage point in autobiographical (2006, background): “( 2003 ), Rubin and Siegler ( 2004 ), Wenzel, Pinna, and Rubin ( 2004 ), and Talarico et al.”