The relationship between attachment and motivated forgetting: Investigating the effects of attachment style and mental representations of attachment figures on the directed forgetting of autobiographical memories

Previous research focused on how attachment security is related to regulating emotions after a stressful event has already occurred. But, the role of attachment on antecedent emotion regulation strategies is not clear. Research on autobiographical memory and emotion regulation suggest that remembering memories can be used to regulate emotions in an antecedent manner. In the present study, for the first time, the relationship between attachment and emotion regulation was investigated by looking at whether imagining a secure attachment figure would help to inhibit negative memories. First, the participants were grouped as secure and insecure based on their attachment scores. Next, participants were asked to imagine their attachment figures, friends or acquaintances according to the experimental condition that they were randomly assigned to. Immediately after the mental activation task, participants were provided with two lists which consisted of equal number of positive and negative words. Participants had to remember a specific autobiographical memory for each word. Half of the participants (forget group) in each mental activation group were instructed to forget list 1 memories and remember list 2 memories. Remaining were asked to recall all memories (remember group). All participants were asked to remember all memories in the final recall. The results demonstrated that mental activation did not have any significant effect on inhibiting positive and negative memories. But, the attachment style significantly moderated the relationship between directed forgetting and memory recall. Particularly, insecurely attached participants were able to inhibit their positive memories, while securely attached ones were not. Furthermore, negative memories were not inhibited regardless of attachment style. These results suggest that insecure attachment down-regulates one's mood by facilitating the inhibition of positive memories. Keywords: Attachment, Emotion Regulation, Intentional Forgetting