We examine whether and how the autobiographical memories that we share can influence the social support that people offer us. Study 1 examined whether sharing specific (e.g., I was upset when reading my ex-partner’s email last Friday) versus nonspecific (e.g., I was upset) memories influences support giving. Studies 2 and 3 additionally examined the effects of episodic detail (i.e., who, what, where) and specificity on support. Participants offered more support to (hypothetical) profiles that shared specific, compared to nonspecific, memories, but these effects were less consistent than those for memory detail. Participants offered more support to profiles that shared memories that were high, compared to low, in detail. Findings were more consistent for the effects of memory detail on emotional support than instrumental support. These findings support the social function of autobiographical memory and suggest one pathway through which autobiographical memory may influence the help we receive.

Exposure to negative life stress has been associated with difficulty retrieving memories for specific autobiographical events, with important consequences for the emergence of emotional disorders. We examined whether social support can protect against the effects of negative events on memory specificity. University students (N = 143) were assigned to groups based on whether or not they experienced a negative stressor, operationalised as whether or not their recent exam performance was in line with their expectations. After receiving their exam results (T1), and one month later (T2), participants completed measures of memory specificity, their attitudes towards themselves and the occurrence of other stressrelated events. Participants also completed a general measure of perceived social support from friends, family, and significant others, and an equivalent measure for social support related to performance. For participants who experienced an exam-related stressor, reduced performance-specific social support from friends was associated with reduced memory specificity at T2, even when accounting for T1 memory specificity, individual differences in attitudes towards self, the experience of additional stressors, and gender. No such relation was present for participants who did not experience a stressor. These findings provide new understanding of the influence of social variables on autobiographical memory specificity.

Difficulties with inhibiting fear have been associated with the emergence of anxiety problems and poor response to cognitive-behavioural treatment. Fear inhibition problems measured using experimental paradigms involving aversive stimuli may be inappropriate for vulnerable samples and may not capture fear inhibition problems evident in everyday life. We present the Fear Inhibition Questionnaire (FIQ), a self-report measure of fear inhibition abilities. We assess the FIQ's factor structure across two cultures and how well it correlates with fear inhibition indices derived experimentally. Adolescent participants from Hong Kong and England completed the FIQ, with the English participants also completing a conditioning and extinction task to assess fear inhibition problems. Across both cultures, the FIQ showed a single factor structure and low FIQ scores, or worse fear inhibition problems, were associated with self-reports of heightened anxiety. Correlation of FIQ scores with experimental indices, whilst controlling for anxious symptoms, suggests that the FIQ represents a valid and unique measure of fear inhibition abilities. The FIQ might be used to assess more ecologically valid fear inhibition problems particularly amongst people who have or who are at risk of anxiety diagnoses.

No abstract

This project encompasses three studies that explore the association between autobiographical memory sharing and social support. We include data, scripts and materials for all studies and in addition, study 3 is pre-registered.