A Study On The Role Of Denial Methods And Self-relevance In Denial-induced Forgetting Effect

As a common defense mechanism,denial includes two ways: internal denial and external denial.Studying the different effects of different denial way on memory and belief can not only deepen the theoretical understanding of denial processing,but also guide the practical application of denial in the field of judicial practice and clinical treatment.Past studies on the denial-induced forgetting showed that different denial ways can affect the memory and belief,but the conclusions were inconsistent.In addition,since the operation of internaldenial in previous studies tended to produce questionable situation representation,and the failure of internaldenial to destroy material details memory may be related to the experimental material itself and individual memory strategy.Therefore,this study used the paradigm of denial-induced forgetting to explore the effects of different denial ways and self-relevance on the memory and belief of event details after adding rationalization and destroying individual memory strategy.This study included two experiments,81 college students were selected in each experiment,using a two-factor mixed design of 2(self-relevance: high vs low)*3(denial ways: internaldenial group vs external denial group vs honesty group).In the experiment,participants watched two videos with different self-relevance.After baseline test,they were randomly interviewed with different tasks(internaldenial,external denial,honest answer),and then they were tested for source memory 24 hours later.It should be noted that in experiment1,rationalization was added to the internaldenial group to explore whether internaldenial would destroy video details after eliminating the memory effect of atypical information.Experiment 2 changed the order of presentation of questions in interviews and source memory tests from sequential presentation to random presentation,in order to explore the effects of different denial ways and self-relevance on individual memory and belief of the materialafter sequential cues were damaged.The results showed that:(1)self-relevance can positively affect the individual’s memoryand belief of event details,and the higher the self-relevance,the higher the individual’s memory and belief level;(2)Without destroying the sequence cues,regardless of the level of self-relevance,internaldenial with rationalization only destroyed the participants’ memory of interview details,but did not affect their memory of the video details.(3)When the sequence cues were not damaged,no matter the level of self-relevance,external denial can destroy both the participants’ memory and belief of the video details,and at the same time produced more non-believed memory;(4)After the sequence cues were damaged,regardless of the level of self-relevance,internaldenial can continue to destroy the memory of the interview details;(5)After destroying the sequence cues,internaldenial only destroyed the participants’ memory of video with low self-relevance;(6)After destroying the sequence clues,externaldenial no longer destroyed the participants’ memory and belief of the video details.