Autobiographical Memory and Conceptions of Self

Abstract

We examine links between self-assessment and autobiographical memory. People generally view themselves as improving over time, relative to their peers. We suggest that this sense of improvement is sometimes illusory, and motivated by the desire to enhance the current self. Our research focuses on people's subjective feeling of temporal distance between an earlier period and the present, a feeling that is only modestly associated with actual time. Research participants praise or criticize the same former self, depending on how far away it feels. An equally distant episode feels close or remote, depending on whether it has favorable or damaging implications for evaluations of the current self. The identical achievement boosts evaluations of the current self or has little impact, depending on how far away it feels. The same failure does or does not harm appraisals of the current self, depending on how far away it feels.