Depression as Indicator of Emotional Regulation: Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory encompasses our recollection of specific, personal events. In this study, we investigate the relationship between emotion and autobiographical memory, focusing on two broad ways in which these interactions occur. First, the emotional content of an experience can influence the way in which the event is remembered. Second, emotions and emotional goals experienced at the time of autobiographical retrieval can influence the information recalled. We examined the specificity of undergraduate students in autobiographical memory retrieval. Undergraduate students (N=64) completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (J.M.G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986), psychological state; depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression, Radloff, 1977), present affective (Positive Affective and Negative Affective Schedule, Watson et al., 1988) as well as personal factors; life orient (Life Orient Test, Scheier & Carver, 1985), self-awareness (Core Self Evaluation Scale, Judge et al., 2003), social factor (Social Support, Sarason et al., 1983). Results showed that individuals with depression were significantly less specific in retrieving negative experiences, relative to control groups of low depression. This result was restricted to negative memory retrieval, as participants did not differ in memory specificity for less emotional experiences. These results show that repressors retrieve negative autobiographical memories in an overgeneral way, possibly in order to avoid retrieving negative experience.