Mnemic Neglect: Studies Based On Self-construal Theory And Two Fundamental Dimensions Of Social Cognition

Numerous studies have shown that people have some kind of memory bias.Studies in the field of self-reference effect and autobiographical memory have evidence that individuals have certain processing advantages when processing self-related information,especially when processing positive information related to self.Generally,the result of memorizing positive information is better than that of negative information.Sedikides and other researchers first discovered the Mnemic Neglect Effect(MNE)and named it.MNE is defined as inferior recall for self-threatening feedback compared to other kinds of feedback.Specifically,recall performance of self-threatening information is worse than other-threatening feedback.Meanwhile,recall performance of self-threatening information is worse than that of self-affirming information.MNE is motivated by Self-protection motivation which is activated when self-concept is threatened.Individuals need to maintain positive self-concept,therefore information that threatens self-concept will be selectively ignored.In addition,researchers have studied the factors that affect memory neglect,and found that factors such as the representativeness of material,the length of time that material is presented,different retrieval ways and individual differences affect the MNE.Therefore,MNE has certain degree of flexibility and some boundary conditions.The current research on the cognitive mechanism of MNE is indirectly derived from the results of behavioral research.The evidence is that MNE only occurs in the task of free recall,but not in the task of recognition.So some researchers have inferred that MNE is due to different encoding depth of different retrieval ways.However,this reasoning has not been more strongly supported yet by some direct evidence.MNE paradigm involves facing external evaluations from the perspective of self and others.In this situation,individuals play different roles and thus stimulate different aspects of the self-concept.Research on self-construal has theoretically constructed the different components of self-concept.Based on the differences in cultural background,Markus divided self-construal into independent-self and interdependent-self.According to the different social roles played by individuals,Sedikides divided self-construal into individual self,relational self,and collective self.Considering people usually choose to hide mistakes of their family members and close friends traditionally,it’s worthy to examine whether MNE will work in Chinese subjects.Self-construal theory describes relationships between individual and self,others and in-groups.From a broader perspective,researchers have divided social cognition and social judgment into two dimensions: Communion / Warmth and Agency / Competence.Since the information involved in the Competence is closely related to the self-esteem of individuals,and also self-esteem is an important part of self-concept.MNE reflects the protection of self-concept.However,in previous studies,only the materials related to Warmth are involved in the study of MNE.It is an open question whether MNE occurs in the Competence dimension and whether MNE has priority in the two dimensions of Warmth and Competence.In summary,there are three main issues examined in this article:1.When individual’s important others is evaluated by others,will the individual,as a bystander,produce MNE consistent with self?2.From the perspective of two basic dimensions of social cognition,when the feedback sentence contains information about Competence dimension,will individuals have MNE consistent with the Warmth dimension? And will there be differences in recall performance between the two dimensions?3.Previous research which examined the cognitive mechanism of memory neglect has concluded that MNE happens in encoding phase according to some indirect results.Does this difference have a more sensitive performance in eye movement indicators?Three studies have been designed to exlpore above questions.Study1 employs mixed experimental design of trait type(central,peripheral)×valence(positive,negative)× reference(self,close friend,stranger),in which the reference is the between-subject variable.Results shows that interation effect among trait type,valence and reference is significant.MNE also emerge when reference is a close friend of subject.Study2 adopts mixed experimental design of the two fundermental dimensions of social cognition(warmth,competence)× trait type(central,peripheral)× valence(positive,negative)× reference(self,stranger),where the reference is the between-subject variable.Results shows that interaction effect among two dimensions,trait type,reference and valence is significant.MNE disappears both under warmth and competence dimensions.Study3 uses a mixed experimental design of trait type(central,peripheral)×reference(self,stranger)× valence(positive,negative),where the reference is the between-subject variable.Eye movement technique is used to investigate the coding processing mechanism of MNE.Data analysis is divided into two parts: recall percentage and eye movement measures.The eye movement measures include: total reading time,first-pass reading time,second pass reading time,mean fixation duration,regression path reading time,number of fixations and regression-out count.To sum up,the conclusions of these studies are as follows:1.The MNE is robust not only in self-referent condition but also in friend-referent condition.Specifically,when a close friend is facing threatening and negative feedback,subject will have worse recall performance than strangers at the same time,the recall performance is also worse than affirming and positive feedback about close friends.2.When feedback sentences about two different dimensions appear simultaneously in the MNE paradigm,they will interfere with the original MNE,leading to the disappearance of the phenomenon in the two dimensions of Warmth and Competence.3.The characteristics of MNE in the coding stage are: in the early processing stage,there is a self-referential processing advantage,and the individual processes the central positive and negative information in a deeper way.However,in the later processing stage,this advantage begins to disappear.Individual’s processing of self-threatening information is worse than same kind of information about strangers.In other words,people use a strategy to “neglect” self-threatening information in the latter encoding phase,which leads to the final differences in recall performance.