Regulating emotional memories: The role of self-distancing across basic and self-conscious emotions
Regulating emotional memories: The role of self-distancing across basic and self-conscious emotions

Summary/Abstract: Self-distancing is an effective tool for regulating emotions and attenuating the sensory experience of memory recollection, typically implemented by changing the visual perspective or language. The research revealed that the impact of visual distancing may depend on the complexity of the emotion, which shows limited efficacy in modulating self-conscious emotions. Conversely, when the distancing is achieved through a narrative shift, it exerts regulatory effects on both basic and self-conscious emotions. Despite this distinction between the two strategies, no study has compared them across different types of emotions. Therefore, the study investigated how shifting perspectives to a distanced or immersed point of view affects sensory memory characteristics, using different strategies (visual, linguistic) and emotions (sadness, shame). Participants (N = 147; M = 21.52, SD = 2.16; 105 females) rated memory phenomenology before and after shifting perspectives, providing scores for the change in ratings. For initial memories, participants reported their sadness-related memories as more important and more negative than shame memories. In line with our expectations, shifting to a distanced perspective reduced imagery vividness but did not affect other sensory qualities. Unexpectedly, we found that, using the visual strategy, the reverse shift to an immersed perspective increased vividness and reliving ratings, particularly for shame memories. This study shows that by immersing oneself in the experience, it is possible to regain lost information from originally distanced-perspective memories, especially for shame memories. These results highlight the importance of discrete emotions and regulation strategies in emotion regulation.

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