Self-referential encoding
Self-referential encoding is a method of organizing information in one's memory in which one interprets incoming information in relation to oneself, using one's self-concept as a background. Examples include being able to attribute personality traits to oneself or to identify recollected episodes as being personal memories of the past. The implications of self-referential processing are evident in many psychological phenomena. For example, the "cocktail party effect" notes that people attend to the sound of their names even during other conversation or more prominent, distracting noise. Also, people tend to evaluate things related to themselves more positively. For example, people tend to prefer their own initials over other letters. The self-reference effect has received the most attention through investigations into memory. The concepts of self-referential encoding and the SRE rely on the notion that relating information to the self during the process of encoding it in memory facilitates recall, hence the effect of self-reference on memory. In essence, researchers have investigated the potential mnemonic properties of self-reference.
Research includes investigations into self-schema, self-concept and self-awareness as providing the foundation for self-reference's role in memory. Multiple explanations for the self-reference effect in memory exist, leading to a debate about the underlying processes involved in the self-reference effect. In addition, through the exploration of the self-reference effect, other psychological concepts have been discovered or supported, including [|simulation theory] and the group reference effect.
After researchers developed a concrete understanding of the self-reference effect, many expanded their investigations to consider the self-reference effect in particular groups like those with autism spectrum disorders or those experiencing [|depression].
Self-concept and self-schema
Self-knowledge can be categorized by structures in memory or schemata. A self-schema is a set of facts or beliefs that one has about themselves. For any given trait, an individual may or may not be "schematic"; that is, the individual may or may not think about themselves as to where they stand on that trait. For example, people who think of themselves as very overweight or who identify themselves to a greater extent based on their body weight would be considered "schematic" on the attribute of body weight. Thus, many everyday events, such as going out for a meal or discussing a friend's eating habits, could induce thoughts about the self. When people relate information to something that has to do with the self, it facilitates memory. Self-descriptive adjectives that fit into one's self-schema are easier to remember than adjectives not viewed as related to the self. Thus, the self-schema is an aspect of oneself that is used as an encoding structure that brings upon memory of information consistent with one's self-schema. Memories that are elaborate and well encoded are usually the result of self-referent correlations during the process of remembering. During the process of encoding, trait representations are encoded in long term memory either directly or indirectly. When they are directly encoded, it is in terms of relating to the self, and when it is indirectly encoded it is done through spouts of episodic information instead of information about the self.Self-schema is often used as somewhat of a database for encoding personal data. The self-schema is also used by paying selective attention to outside information and internalizing that information more deeply in one's memory depending on how much that information relates to their schema. When self-schema is engaged, traits that go along with one's view of themselves are better remembered and recalled. These traits are also often recalled much better when processed with respect to the self. Similarly, items that are encoded with the self are based on one's self-schema. Processing the information should balance out when recalled for individuals who have a self-schema that goes along with the information.
Self-schemas do not necessarily only involve individual traits. People self-categorize at different levels that range from more personal to more social. Self-schemas have three main categories which play a role: the personal self, the relational self, and the collective self. The personal self deals with individual level characteristics, the relational self deals with intimate relationship partners, and the collective self deals with group identities, relating to self-important social groups to which one belongs. Information that is related to any type of self-schema, including group-related knowledge structures facilitates memory.
In order for the self to be an effective encoding mechanism, it must be a uniform, consistent, well-developed schema. It has been shown that identity exploration leads to the development of self-knowledge which facilitates self-judgments. Identity exploration led to shorter decision times, higher confidence ratings and more intrusions in memory tasks. Previous researchers hypothesized that words compatible with a person's self-schema are easily accessible in memory and are more likely than incompatible words to intrude on a schema-irrelevant memory task. In one experiment, when participants were asked to decide if certain adjectives were "like me" or "not like me," they made the decisions faster when the words were compatible with their self-schema.
However, despite the existence of the self-reference effect when considering schemata consistent adjectives, the connection between the self and memory can lead to a larger number of mistakes in recognition, commonly referred to as false alarms. Rogers et al. found that people are more likely to falsely recognize adjectives they had previously designated to be self-descriptive. Expanding on this, Strube et al. found that false alarms occurred more for self-schema consistent content, presumably because the presence of such words in the schema makes them more accessible in memory.
In addition to investigating the self-reference effect in regards to schemata consistent information, Strube et al. discussed how counter schemata information relates to this framework. They noted that the pattern of making correct decisions more rapidly did not hold when considering words that countered a person's self-schema, presumably because they were difficult to integrate into memory due to lack of a preexisting structure. That is, they lacked the organizational structure of encoding because they did not fall into the "like me" category, and elaboration would not work because prior connections to the adjective did not exist.
Self-awareness and personality
Two of the most common functions of the self receiving significant attention in research are the self-acting to organize the individual's understanding of the social environment, and the self functioning to regulate behavior through self-evaluation. The concept of self-awareness is considered to be the foundational principle for both functions of the self. Some research presents self-awareness in terms of self-focused attention whereas Hull and Levy suggest that self-awareness refers to the encoding of information based on its relevance to the self. Based on the latter interpretation of self-awareness, individuals must identify the aspects of situations that are relevant to themselves and their behavior will be shaped accordingly. Hull and Levy suggest that self-awareness corresponds to the encoding of information cued by self-symbolic stimuli, and examine the idea of self-awareness as a method of encoding. They structured an investigation that examined self-referent encoding in individuals with different levels of self-awareness, predicting that individuals with higher levels of self-consciousness would encode self-relevant information more deeply than other information, and that they would encode it more deeply than individuals with low levels of self-consciousness. The results of their investigation supported their hypothesis that self-focused attention is not enough to explain the role of self-awareness on attribution. Their results suggest that self-awareness leads to increased sensitivity to the situationally defined meanings of behavior, and therefore organizes the individual's understanding of the social environment. The research presented by Hull and Levy led to future research on the encoding of information associated with self-awareness.In later research, Hull and colleagues examined the associations between self-referential encoding, self-consciousness and the extent to which a stimulus is consistent with self-knowledge. They first assumed that the encoding of a stimulus is facilitated if an individual's working memory already contains information consistent with the stimulus, and suggested that self-consciousness as an encoding mechanism relies on an individual's self-knowledge. It is known that situational and dispositional factors may activate certain pools of knowledge, moving them into working memory, and guiding the processing of certain stimulus information.
In order to better understand the idea of activating information in memory, Hull et al. presented an example of how information is activated. They referred to the sentence "The robber took the money from the bank". In English, the word bank has two applicable meanings in the context of this sentence. However, the monetary institution meaning of the word is more highly activated in this context due to the addition of the words robber and money to the sentence, because they are associatively relevant and therefore pull the monetary institution definition for bank into working memory. Once information is added to working memory, meanings and associations are more easily drawn. Therefore, the meaning of this example sentence is almost universally understood.
In reference to self-consciousness and self-reference, the connection between self-consciousness and self-referent encoding relies on such information activation. Research suggests that self-consciousness activates knowledge relating to the self, thereby guiding the processing of self-relevant information. Three experiments conducted by Hull and colleagues provided evidence that a manipulation of accessible self-knowledge impacts self-referent encoding based on the self-relevance of such information, individual differences in the accessibility of self-knowledge impacts perception, and a mediation relationship exists between self-consciousness and individual differences in self-referential encoding.
Similar to how self-awareness impacts the availability of self-knowledge and the encoding of self-relevant information, through the development of the self-schema, people develop and maintain certain personality characteristics leading to a variety of behavior patterns. Research has been done on the differences between Type A and Type B behavior patterns, focusing on how people in each group respond to environmental information and their interpretation of the performance of others and themselves. It has been found that Type A behavior is characterized by competitive achievement striving, time urgency and hostility, whereas Type B is usually defined as an absence of Type A characteristics. When investigating causal attributions for hypothetical positive and negative outcomes, Strube et al. found that Type A individuals were more self-serving, in that they took greater responsibility for positive than negative effects. Strube and colleagues argued that this could be a result of the fact that schema-consistent information is more easily remembered and the ease with which past successes and failures are recalled, determined by self-schema, would impact attributions. It is reasonable to believe that Type A's might recall successes more easily and hence be more self-serving.