Barbara A. Woike

The role of motives in the content and structure of autobiographical memory.

Findings from 4 studies suggest that differentiation and integration are used by individuals high in agency and communion to structure motive-related information in episodic memory. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that agentic and communal individuals recalled more emotional experiences related to their motives, and that agentic individuals used more differentiation whereas communal individuals used more integration to structure these memories. Study 3 showed that agentic and communal individuals used more differentiation and integration to structure memories about social separation and connection, respectively. Study 4 demonstrated a similar pattern of recall in an experimentally controlled retrieval task. For a motive-congruent topic, agentic individuals recognized more differentiated information and had fewer differentiation recognition errors, and communal individuals freely recalled more integration.

The use of differentiation and integration processes : empirical studies of separate and connected ways of thinking

Two studies investigated the prediction that differentiation would be used by individuals concerned with separateness, personal agency, and power, whereas integration would be used by individuals concerned with relatedness, interpersonal communion, and intimacy. In Experiment 1, women who reexperienced a personal event linked to communal issues used more integration (relative to differentiation) when evaluating target persons than did men who reexperienced a personal event linked to agency. Experiment 2 demonstrated that in situations that were congruent with their motives, intimacy-motivated women and men used more integration (relative to differentiation) when evaluating target persons than did power-motivated men and women

A Functional Framework for the Influence of Implicit and Explicit Motives on Autobiographical Memory

A functional framework explains the influence of implicit and explicit motives on autobiographical memory. Personality motives at different levels of awareness are differentially activated by the social context and, in turn, engage memory processes. Research shows that these motives influence both what and how autobiographical events are remembered. Specifically, implicit motives modulate encoding and recall of emotional experiences, vivid memories, and event-specific knowledge through nonconscious organizing strategies that facilitate affective end states. Explicit motives modulate encoding and recall of events linked to self-concept stability change, as well as routine experiences and general event scripts that represent typical self-attributed behaviors that facilitate the attainment of current goals. Research from narrative essays, self-report data, and controlled experiments demonstrates that implicit and explicit motives have a differential influence on each step of the memory process. An integrative framework explains this research from a functional perspective.

Motive-related memories: content, structure, and affect.

Two studies tested hypotheses on the content and structure of autobiographical memories and the affect linked to them. In Study 1, agentic- and communal-motivated individuals recorded their most memorable experiences and completed the PANAS each day for 6 weeks. Memories were coded for content and structure. Agentics and communals reported more motive congruent memories, and their congruent memories were structured using more differentiation and integration, respectively. In addition, agentics had slightly higher PA and lower NA scores. In Study 2, agentics and communals recalled an event pertaining to either social separation or connection and then completed an affect measure of agentic and communal items. Agentics recalled more agentic memories in the separation condition and communals recalled more communal memories in the connection condition. Complexity analyses showed that agentics and communals used differentiation and integration respectively to recall their motive-congruent memories. The affect data showed a modestpredicted pattern. Results suggest that implicit motives have an impact on autobiographical memory but are not as clearly related to self-report affect measures, possibly due to method variance.

The influence of implicit motives on memory processes.

Four studies tested the hypothesis that agentic and communal motives act as a channel for new knowledge and are linked to specific ways of organizing information that facilitate its accessibility. In Study 1, agentic and communal participants read an agentic or a communal vignette consisting of differentiated and integrated statements, performed a distraction task, then completed written recall and recognition tasks. Agentics recalled and recognized more differentiation in the agentic story; communals recalled and recognized more integration in the communal story. A computerized replication with randomized recognition items (Study 2) found the same pattern of recognition results. Studies 3 and 4 used implicit motive primes and found similar results in both written and computerized recognition tasks. These ways of organizing information have powerful implications for the encoding of autobiographical knowledge and its long-term organization.