Self-relevance and wishful thinking: Facilitation and distortion in source monitoring

When making source attributions, people tend to attribute desirable statements to reliable sources and undesirable statements to unreliable sources, a phenomenon known as the wishful thinking effect (Gordon, Franklin, & Beck, 2005). In the present study, we examined the influence of wishful thin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Memory & cognition 2009-06, Vol.37 (4), p.434-446
Main Authors: Barber, Sarah J., Gordon, Ruthanna, Franklin, Nancy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Affect
Attention
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Choice Behavior
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Psychology
Conflict (Psychology)
Culture
Decision Making
Fantasy
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Groundwater
Human
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Judgment
Learning. Memory
Memory
Mental Recall
Perceptions
Plagiarism
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Self Concept
Self image
Social Perception
Thinking
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Summary:When making source attributions, people tend to attribute desirable statements to reliable sources and undesirable statements to unreliable sources, a phenomenon known as the wishful thinking effect (Gordon, Franklin, & Beck, 2005). In the present study, we examined the influence of wishful thinking on source monitoring for self-relevant information. On one hand, wishful thinking is expected, because self-relevant desires are presumably strong. However, self-relevance is known to confer a memory advantage and may thus provide protection from desire-based biases. In Experiment 1, source memory for self-relevant information was contrasted against source memory for information relevant to others and for neutral information. Results indicated that self-relevant information was affected by wishful thinking and was remembered more accurately than was other information. Experiment 2 showed that the magnitude of the self-relevant wishful thinking effect did not increase with a delay.
ISSN:0090-502X
1532-5946
DOI:10.3758/MC.37.4.434