People not only have vivid memories of their own personal experiences, but also vicarious memories of events that happened to other people. To compare the phenomenological and functional qualities of personal and vicarious memories, college students described a specific past event that they had recounted to a parent or friend, and also an event that a friend or parent had recounted to them. Although ratings of memory vividness, emotional intensity, visualization, and physical reactions were higher for personal than for vicarious memories, the overall pattern of ratings was similar. Participants' ratings also indicated that vicarious memories serve many of the same life functions as personal memories, although at lower levels of intensity. The findings suggest that current conceptions of autobiographical memory, which focus on past events that happened directly to the self, should be expanded to include detailed mental representations of specific past events that happened to other people.

This research tested the hypothesis that people's decisions and future plans are influenced by recently activated autobiographical memories. University students rated the overall quality of their college experiences. They were also asked to describe a specific memory of being either satisfied or dissatisfied with the university. Control participants did not describe a memory. After statistically controlling for pre-existing attitudes towards the university, students who recounted a positive memory expressed the strongest intentions to donate money to the university, attend a class reunion, and recommend the university to others, and they were more likely than controls to specify that an actual donation be made to the university rather than to another charity. Emotional intensity of positive memories predicted future plans and donation decisions. Students who recounted a negative memory also tended to favour the university in their actual donation decisions compared to controls. Prompting the recall of emotional memories may be an effective way to influence intentions and decisions.

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Prior research has shown that memories of feeling good about the self often focus on achievement themes, whereas memories of feeling bad about the self often focus on interpersonal themes. This study examined whether a similar relationship would be evident for imagined future events. Young adults in the United States and Denmark provided memories and imagined future events that are associated with positive or negative self-regard. Across cultures, achievement themes were prominently represented in memories of positive self-regard and interpersonal themes were prominently represented in memories of negative self-regard. In contrast, relationships between the emotional valence and thematic content of imagined future events were weak and inconsistent. Our results raise new questions for the theory that imagined future episodes are constructed primarily from recombinations of past episodes.