Gender differences in emotional experiences across childhood, romantic relationship, and self-defining memories

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present study is to examine the gender differences in emotional experiences across three different types of autobiographical memory. A total of 612 undergraduate students from Izmir, Turkey, were asked to recall a memory either from childhood, from romantic relationships, or from self-defining experiences. A gender difference was found in the intensity of anxiety, sadness, and pride for romantic relationship memories. Men had higher scores on emotional distancing than women in self-defining memories. With regard to emotional valance, women’s feelings were less positive than men’s feelings when remembering childhood and romantic relationship experiences, whereas they were more positive than men’s feelings when remembering self-defining experiences. The findings support the notion that gender differences in emotional experiences during the autobiographical recollection of personal life events vary across different memory types.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiographical memory
• childhood memories
• romantic relationship memories
• self-defining memories
• emotions
• gender differences

Notes

1 In order to avoid complexity and repetition, the tests of individual emotions that were not relevant to the aim of the present study or yielded similar patterns were not reported here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was conducted at and supported by Dokuz Eylul University [grant number 2012.KB.SOS.010].