Professional discrepancies of doctors and lawyers in episodic memory: Modulations of professional morality and warning

Abstract

Past investigations have consistently demonstrated the robust stereotype‐consistent effect in the circumstance of source memory but not always in item memory, including the case of professional stereotype. However, it remains unclear whether the effect still occurs in professional stereotype when considering the attributes of negative (or bad) or positive (or good); besides, it has not been concerned about how does warning work in remembering the professional stereotypical stimuli. The current experiments aimed to address these issues by adopting descriptive sentences as stimuli, which were related or unrelated to doctors and lawyers, and with different professional moral valences (negative, neutral, or positive). Item memory and source memory were tested successively. Experiment 1 without the explicit warning confirmed the reliable stereotype‐consistent effect solely in source memory; the modulation of professional morality on memory behaved differently between doctor and lawyer, that is, negativity bias versus positivity bias. When giving an explicit warning (Experiment 2), the stereotype‐consistent effect attenuated in the lawyer case, and the occurrence of negativity bias was sensitive to the memory task. Thus, our findings further reinforce the dual‐process model; both professional morality and warning work in memory of professional stereotype, depending upon the nature of the profession, the concerned memory task, and also the presence of warning. Implications are made for future research to consider more perspectives.

Benefits and Detriments of Social Collaborative Memory in Turn-Taking and Directed Forgetting

“…The test blocks included Recall 1, Distraction 2, and Recall 2, with both recalls including item memory and source memory tasks. These two tasks were manipulated via the sequential paradigm that has been widely adopted in source memory research, especially when distinguishing source memory from item memory tasks (Nie et al, 2019, 2022, 2021b; Nie & Li, 2021; Ventura-Bort et al, 2016; Yick & Wilding, 2014). In the current tests by this paradigm, participants were told to recall as many words and previously displayed colors for each recalled word as possible.…”

“…It is well known that human memory is focused on both the core content of an event and its contextual settings. Episodic memory, memory for self-experienced episodes, contains two subtypes: (a) item memory – either the core memory that distinguishes new from old items (e.g., item recognition ) or the recall of studied information (e.g., item recall ); and (b) source memory - the retrieval of contextual details in which the event information was acquired (Guidotti et al, 2019; Li & Nie, 2021; Massol et al, 2020; Nie, 2018; Nie & Deng, 2023; Nie et al, 2019, 2021b; Nie & Li, 2021; Schaper et al, 2019; Schaper and Bayen, 2021; Zhou et al, 2020).…”

“…These processes are believed to be distinctly engaged in the subtypes of episodic memory. Item recognition relies more on familiarity, while source memory is more underpinned by recollection (Bastin et al, 2019; Cooper et al, 2017; Nie & Deng, 2023; Nie et al, 2019, 2022, 2021b; Nie & Li, 2021; Yonelinas et al, 2010). Despite their differences, item recall and source memory share some dependency on the recollection process (Kragel & Polyn, 2016; Nie et al, 2019; Rajan & Bell, 2015).…”

Does Expecting Matter? The Impact of Experimentally Established Expectations on Subsequent Memory Retrieval of Emotional Words

“…For source memory, the data of both color retrieval and cue identification in each condition were analyzed using the conditional source identification measure (CSIM) rates. CSIM rates are the percentage of correctly identified source items in all the items that a participant identified as studied per condition (Bell and Buchner 2011;Nie and Li 2021;Schellhaas et al 2020). There were two reasons for using the index CSIM rates.…”