Effects of Imagining Someone Else Experience a Negative Autobiographical Memory on Phenomenological Experience

Abstract

We investigated whether the phenomenological experience of a negative autobiographical memory changes when the self is presumably distanced from it. In session 1, participants described and phenomenologically rated an important negative event. One week later, in session 2, they imagined and described the event as if either a similar or a dissimilar friend experienced it. Afterward, they once more rated the original event that they described in session 1. Results showed increased observer perspective and decreased vividness, accessibility, and reliving of the original event after imagining that a friend experienced it. Importantly, when the negative event was imagined as experienced by a friend, preoccupation with overwhelming emotions related to the event, the event's emotional intensity, and its centrality to identity and life story also decreased. When the imagined friend was dissimilar, the emotional valence of the memory became more positive, and the emotional distance to the memory increased.