10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.8143214.V1
Lucy Tavitian-Elmadjian
Michael Bender
Fons J. R. Van de Vijver
Athanasios Chasiotis
Charles Harb
Autobiographical recall of mastery experiences is a mechanism of self-affirming under social identity threat
<p>Autobiographical memories are relevant to many areas of psychological functioning. So far, however, there is no evidence whether personal memories can also be instrumental for self-affirmation. We conducted two experiments, varying national identity threat among U.S. Americans recruited through MTurk. In Study 1, participants spontaneously recalled autobiographical memories after being exposed to varying levels of threat. When the threat was identity-relevant, those who spontaneously recalled mastery autobiographical memories had higher collective self-esteem than those who did not. In Study 2, we instructed participants to recall either mastery autobiographical memories or routine memories. When the threat was identity-relevant, collective self-esteem was again higher for mastery recall compared to routine recall, moderated by national identification and self-esteem. We also found a general, self-affirmative effect of autobiographical memories, regardless of threat relevance or recall content. Findings provide a first empirical demonstration that autobiographical recall can enhance self-affirmation in identity threat situations.</p>
Sociology
111714 Mental Health
110309 Infectious Diseases
60506 Virology
Taylor & Francis
2019
2019-05-17
2020-04-23
Journal contribution
19036 Bytes
10.1080/00224545.2019.1606775
10.6084/m9.figshare.8143214
CC BY 4.0