The devil's in the detail: Accessibility of specific personal memories supports rose-tinted self-generalizations in mental health and toxic self-generalizations in clinical depression.

ABSTRACT: Models of memory propose that separate systems underpin the storage and recollection of specific events from our past (e.g., the first day at school), and of the generic structure of our experiences (e.g., how lonely I am), and that interplay between these systems serves to optimize everyday cognition. Specifically, it is proposed that memories of discrete events help define the circumstances (boundary conditions) in which our generalized knowledge applies, thereby enhancing accuracy of memory-dependent cognitive processes. However, in the domain of self-judgment, cognition is systematically biased, with a robust self-enhancement bias characterizing healthy individuals and a negativity bias characterizing the clinically depressed. We hypothesized that self-enhancement effects in the mental

SUBMITTER: Hitchcock C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6600872 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature