Visual perspective in autobiographical memories of self-incongruent episodes

Rationale: It is widely assumed that autobiographical memories rely on an integration of episodic memories with the self-model. We hypothesize that this integration process is influenced by the affective valence and the specific emotions that are elicited by an experience. More specifically, negative experiences that are incongruent with the self-model and that elicit self-conscious emotions such as shame or guilt may be more difficult to integrate. This self-conflict could not only affect the content of autobiographical memories, but also their phenomenology: Apart from their affective valence, autobiographical memories differ in their visual perspective, because they can either be experienced from a first or a third person perspective (field vs. observer perspective), as well as in their perceived centrality for one’s life story. Understanding whether and how activation of, and incongruence with, the self-model influences the phenomenology of autobiographical memories is thus an important step towards a mechanistic model of self-memory integration.Objective: We aimed to investigate whether self-incongruent autobiographical memories that elicit feelings of shame or guilt differ in their phenomenological characteristics from other negative or neutral memories. We focus on the visual perspective of these memories and aim to elucidate the factors that contribute to possible changes in visual perspective from an initial first to the third person perspective.Methods: A group of n=65 adult participants (age range: 18-35) completed a daily online diary survey over 11 weeks. On each day, participants were asked to report an episode from one of four different categories (shame, guilt, negative, neutral). Participants rated all memories in terms of their degree of shame, guilt, negative affect, visual perspective, and expected centrality. Differences between phenomenological characteristics of the four types of episodes were assessed via ANOVAs, and the relationships between these characteristics were analyzed via hierarchical multilevel models.Results: Autobiographical memories that elicit feelings of shame, but not those inducing guilt, showed higher degrees of 3rd person visual perspective as compared to negative or neutral experiences. However, shameful episodes also elicited the most pronounced negative affect, and correlation analyses revealed that affective valence, expected centrality and shame were all related to visual perspective. A multilevel analysis in which several predictors of visual perspective were considered conjointly helped disentangle these effects: It showed only a highly significant effect of shame and a marginally significant effect of expected centrality. Affective valence did not have a significant influence on visual perspective in this model, suggesting that its effect on visual perspective is mainly mediated by shame.Conclusion: We found that incongruence with the self-model affects the phenomenological characteristics of autobiographical memories and show that this effect depends on feelings of shame. Our results provide a better understanding of the factors that influence the visual perspective of autobiographical memories. More generally, they contribute to a mechanistic understanding of self-memory integration in the service of autobiographical memory. Future research should address whether and how changes in visual perspective can be manipulated experimentally, how they develop over time, and whether they contribute to psychopathology such as memories for traumatic events.