The role of emotional valence and arousal level on autobiographical memory and counterfactual thinking

This thesis investigated the effects of subjective emotional valence and emotional arousal levels on the phenomenological experience of autobiographical memories. The study consisted of two experiments. In the first experiment, two dimensions of emotional valence (positive or negative) and two levels of emotional arousal (low or high) were systematically manipulated to examine their impact on autobiographical memory phenomenology. Forty-eight participants were asked to recall memories in four categories—high-positive, low-positive, high-negative, and low-negative—and to provide phenomenological evaluations of these memories. Results showed that memories with high arousal were rated higher in detail, vividness, belief in accuracy, accessibility, importance, narrative coherence, contribution to self and identity, field perspective, and preoccupation with emotions compared to low-arousal memories. In addition, positive memories were rated higher than negative ones in importance and contribution to identity, whereas negative memories were rated higher than positive ones in preoccupation with emotions. These findings indicate that arousal level is the primary variable influencing phenomenological experience of autobiographical memory. In the second experiment, the effect of manipulating arousal level in counterfactual thinking on autobiographical memory phenomenology was examined. Seventy- four participants were randomly assigned to either a high- or low-arousal counterfactual thinking condition. In the first session, participants recalled a negative and important memory and completed phenomenological evaluations. One week later, in the second session, they were asked to generate a counterfactual event with either higher or lower arousal than the original event, depending on the condition, and then to re-evaluate the phenomenology of the original memory. Only the high-arousal condition led participants to evaluate the original event more positively in the second session. No effects of arousal level of the counterfactual event were observed on the other phenomenological experiences. The results of both experiments were discussed in the context of the relevant literature and suggestions for future research were provided.