Identity, emotion and memory in college students

This study investigates the role of autobiographical memory for emotion in identity status. Students identified as identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion rated emotions and traits according to their degree of importance in impression formation and their self-descriptiveness. They recalled memories of sad, happy, angry, and fearful experiences and of traits rated as congruent and incongruent. They also wrote narratives about an experience of each of these emotions. Narratives were coded for overall structure and emotion and character content.;Subjects perceive positive emotions as more important in impression formation, rate positive emotions and traits as more self-descriptive, and recall more happy memories. Identity achievers show the highest congruency ratings of positive emotions and traits, while diffusions show the lowest ratings. Foreclosures have low congruency ratings for positive traits. Moratoriums have high congruency ratings for fear. Moratoriums show lower recall of happy experiences. Foreclosures show lower recall of angry experiences. The identity statuses do not differ in their recall for memories of traits rated as congruent or incongruent with self-perceptions.;The overall structure of the narratives varies by emotion, with fear and anger narratives typically being plotted and not moment-in-time, but does not vary by identity status. Sad stories contain more emotion words, but use of emotional words does not vary by identity status. The character content of the narratives differs by emotion, but identity status differences in the character content of the narratives are clouded by gender. Female achievers mention family members more and general others less than male achievers in anger stories. Male diffusions mention general others more than female diffusions in fear stories.;This study indicates that there are few direct relationships between identity status and autobiographical memory for emotion. It is suggested that these results support the belief that emotion is a strong organizer of our world and that the measures used in this study are sensitive to people's shared beliefs about emotion, but not to the smaller individual differences governed by identity status. The usefulness of the identity status paradigm as it is currently conceptualized is also discussed.