When I saw me standing there: first-person and third-person memories and future projections, and how they relate to the self

ABSTRACT

We studied visual perspective of three autobiographical memories and three projected future events (i.e. whether the events were experienced from a first-person or third-person perspective, or in between) in 117 undergraduate students. Perspective proved to be a reliable individual-differences variable. The majority of narratives trended toward the first-person perspective, with memories more likely to yield first-person perspective than future events. Perspective was predicted by detail (higher level of participant-reported visual detail was more likely to elicit first-person perspective), and temporal distance (events reported as being further away in time were more likely to elicit third-person perspective). Detail, in turn, was explained (among others) by the individual-differences variable of depression/social uncertainty (a factor-derived scale consisting of rumination scales, the inverse of the Sense Of Self Scale, the Social Phobia Scale, and, to a lesser extent, the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale). Generally, predictors for memories and future events overlapped. The results underscore the need for including individual-differences variables in research on the determinants of memory perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiographical memory
• memory
• self
• perspective
• point-of-view

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Haley Collins, Susan Davies, Jordan Greene, Alex Montoya, Amy Shim, and Radhika Solanki for data collection and scoring

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We note that memory detail likewise formed a single scale, Cronbach's alpha = .72, with no improvement in reliability if any of the six measures was deleted from the scale.