Effects of dissociation on the characteristics of the happiest and the saddest autobiographical memories

ABSTRACT

Dissociation is one of the phenomena that is closely linked to memory processes, specifically to autobiographical memory. Although a considerable amount of research investigated the relationship between dissociation and basic memory processes, how dissociation as a non-pathological personality trait relates to the characteristics of autobiographical memory is still largely unclear. Here, we investigated the relationship between dissociative tendency and the affect, phenomenology, and centrality of emotional autobiographical memories by asking participants low and high on dissociation to recall their happiest and saddest memories. Results indicated that dissociation is characterised by a negative self-concept and leads to increased accessibility and centrality of the saddest memories to identity and life story and to decreased vividness and clarity of time of the happiest memories. Findings also showed that dissociation leads to perceiving these emotionally salient memories as psychologically more distant yet feeling more positive about them over time, supporting the view of dissociation as the result of an ineffective emotional regulation system. The study provides empirical evidence that dissociation relates to the recollective experience of valenced autobiographical memories in different ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Dissociation
• autobiographical memory
• centrality of event
• phenomenology
• affect

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As dichotomising continuously measured variables through a specific cut-off on a scale to assign individuals into groups is a cautioned approach (see Preacher et al., 2005; DeCoster et al., 2009), we also carried out a supplementary analysis with linear mixed models using continuous DES scores (for details of these analyses, see Supplementary Materials). Results of these analyses resembled those of ANOVAs using dissociation as a categorical variable, with only differences in accessibility and coherence dimensions. Although there is still running debate about the underlying latent structure of dissociation, a considerable amount of research suggested a categorical approach (e.g., Waller et al., 1996; Modestin & Erni, 2004; Boysan, 2014), which is one of the criteria that DeCoster et al. (2009) argued to be appropriate to use dichotomised variables. Thus, we retained and reported the results of ANOVAs that use dichotomised dissociation scores.