How memories of past disturbing events persist and change over time

Abstract

Stability and change in personal memories of past disturbing experiences were assessed. University students wrote memory narratives about the same upsetting past events on two occasions separated by a three-year delay. While recalling their memories both the first and the second times, the participants also indicated their levels of depression, self-esteem, and mood, and provided appraisals of the experiences they described. By comparing the second memory to the first, I examined the information in the original memories that was the same, new, contradicted, or omitted in subsequent memories. I investigated the stability and transformations over time of the gist of the memory, of contents of the memory in general, and of specific memory content including affect and facts. Participants were moderately consistent in their recall over time. They introduced a considerable proportion of new information to their recollections and omitted a sizeable amount of old content. However, they rarely contradicted their original accounts. I further evaluated how memory stability and change were related to participants': (a) subjective well-being (levels of depression, self-esteem, and positive and negative mood); (b) appraisals of the events (including degree of resolution regarding the event, event significance and severity, negative views of the events, and changed thought and feelings about the event); (c) age and gender; and (d) memory vividness confidence. The patterns of results suggested that the subjective well-being (depression, self-esteem, and mood) when participants initially recalled their memories was predictive of later memory stability with some mood-congruent effects. People's current appraisals of the disturbing personal events were relatively unpredictive of memory consistency compared to people's well-being.