Memory for emotional and neutral information: Gender and individual differences in emotional sensitivity

Abstract

In studies of autobiographical memory, women typically remember more emotional information than do men. The present study evaluated whether women recall more emotional information than men when the content of an event is controlled. Participants read a script containing emotional and neutral information, under instructions to prepare advice for the characters addressing either interpersonal issues (emotional focus), concrete plans (neutral focus), or with no particular topic suggested (undirected focus). After writing out advice, on a surprise memory test women recalled more emotional information than men in all focus conditions with no deficit in neutral recall. Women recalled more neutral information than men in the neutral focus condition. A measure of emotional sensitivity mediated the gender difference in emotional recall suggesting that memory for emotional information is not solely a function of gender.

This research was supported by NIA grant AG09253.

Notes

For both emotional and neutral statements there was a main effect of script indicating that the Script 2 recognition test was harder than the Script 1 test. However, there were no significant interactions between script and gender, or script and type of focus, and there was no significant three-way interaction. Thus, the recognition data were collapsed across scripts.