This study examined how inducing mortality salience affects episodic memory in young adults. Younger adults typically recall positive information better than negative (positivity effect), while older adults show the opposite pattern. The researchers hypothesized that raising mortality salience in young adults would produce a positivity effect by shortening their perceived time horizon. Participants wrote about death, dental work, or pumping gas and later viewed images. Recalling emotional vs. neutral images replicated previous findings. However, mortality salience only enhanced recall of positive vs. negative images compared to the dental condition, not the non-emotional gas condition. The results provide partial support for the idea that mortality salience can induce a positivity effect in young adults by shortening their time horizon

1. Mortality salience: Methodological considerations for future research
Brian Emmert, Jr., Leeland L. Rogers, Anna B. Drummey, Ph.D., Irene P. Kan, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Villanova University, Villanova, PA
Effects of age & emotion on episodic memory
• Episodic memory is enhanced for emotional compared to neutral stimuli
• Nature of emotional memory enhancement differs between age groups:
»Younger adults: positive < negative information (Kensinger, 2007)
» Older adults: positive > negative information (i.e. the positivity effect)
(Charles et al., 2003; Fernandes et al., 2008)
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST, Carstensen, Isaacowitz & Charles, 1999)
• SST provides an explanation for memory positivity in older adults
» Cognition is influenced by our motivation, which differs as a function
of our perceived time horizon
» Shrinking time horizon engenders motivation to maintain emotional
well being
» Limited time horizon (such as in old age) leads to emotion regulation
that favors positive information (Carstensen, 2006)
Subjects & Method
• College students wrote about their thoughts and feelings associated with one of the following:
» their death (mortality condition, n = 77)
» undergoing dental procedure (not fatal but unpleasant condition, n = 77)
» pumping gas (non-emotional, n = 79)
• Subjects then viewed a series of 32 images: 8 positive, 8 negative, 16 neutral
(all but 5 neutral images were from the International Affective Picture System; Lang et al., 2008)
• After a 15-minute filled delay, subjects recalled as many of the pictures as possible
» subjects were asked to provide “brief descriptions” of images (same instructions as Charles et al., 2003)
» verbal descriptions were scored by 2 naïve coders
• Replicated the emotional advantage of memory recall (i.e., better memory for emotional than neutral stimuli)
• Effect of mortality is evident only when compared to the dentist condition
» for both episodic memory and priming measures
• Our unexpected finding suggests the importance of baseline task selection when utilizing the mortality salience manipulation
BACKGROUND
PROCEDURE
CURRENT STUDY
Will foreshortening time horizon in young adults influence
their emotional memory?
• If memory positivity is due to an increased awareness of shrinking time
horizon, then raising mortality salience in young adults should also
induce memory positivity
» Previous findings illustrate that raising mortality salience affects social
partner preferences, social goals, and automatic processing of emotional
information (Fung, et al., 1999; Fung & Carstensen, 2004; De Wall & Baumeister, 2007)
» However, such influence has not been demonstrated in explicit memory
Inducing shortened time horizon: Mortality salience
• Typical comparison in the literature: mortality vs. dental procedure
» Rationale: Writing about a dental procedure leads to unpleasant
thoughts and feelings that are unrelated to death
» Interpretation: Death-specific thoughts trigger protective mechanisms
that suppress negative emotions
• We included a non-emotional baseline condition (i.e., pumping gas) in
order to assess the relative contribution of general negative thoughts and
death-specific negative thoughts to memory positivity
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Long Beach, CA, 2014
negative
neutral
positive
RESULTS
Group (mortality, dentist) x valence (pos, neg)
• Interaction: F(1, 152) = 2.95, p = .09
• Group & Valence MEs: both F(1, 152) < 1
• Numerical difference between mortality negative
and dentist negative is suggestive of mortality
salience dampening recall of negative images
CONCLUSIONS
Error bars indicate S.E. of the mean
p = .55
• Replicated emotional memory enhancement effect in all groups (emotional images > neutral images)
• No difference in overall memory performance across groups (mortality = 0.38, dentist = 0.38, gas = 0.37)
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0
p = .08
Meanproportionrecall
Negative Positive
Mortality Dentist
Group (mortality, gas) x valence (pos, neg)
• Interaction: F(1, 154) < 1
• Group & Valence MEs: both F(1, 154) < 1
• No evidence of group or condition difference
• Effect of mortality salience is eliminated
when compared to gas pumping baseline
Error bars indicate S.E. of the mean
p = .55
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0
p = .43
Meanproportionrecall
Negative Positive
Mortality Gas
Manipulation checks:
• Content analyses of writing samples
confirmed compliance with task instructions
• Conducted priming study to verify the
availability of death-related thoughts:
» Same initial tasks as main study
» Introduced 20 word completion trials after
filled delay (Schimel, et al. 2007)
» 6 critical stems (e.g., COFF ) that can
be completed with either a neutral word
(e.g., coffee) or a death-related word
(e.g., coffin)
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0
Meanp(death-wordcompletion)
Mortality
(n = 26)
Gas
(n = 29)
Dentist
(n = 26)
TV
(n = 24)
p = .05 p = .08