Gender differences in autobiographical narratives: He shoots and scores; she evaluates and interprets.
Summary of "Gender differences in autobiographical narratives: He shoots and scores; she evaluates and interprets."
Research on autobiographical narratives consistently demonstrates that whereas women's narratives emphasize evaluative information, men's narratives are factually oriented. These narrative differences might reflect gender differences in either the autobiographical knowledge base or the way information from the knowledge base is selected when a narrative is constructed. The present experiment evaluated these two (potentially complementary) hypotheses by assessing memory soon after an event and after a period of 6 weeks, using both open-ended (narrative) and factually oriented (questionnaire) measures. Consistent with past literature, women told longer, richer, more evaluative narratives than did men. However, men recalled more factual information both initially and after 6 weeks and also constructed narratives that were more factually oriented. These data suggest that men and women value factual information differently and that these differences influence both the contents of the autobiographical knowledge base and the way that information in the knowledge base is used to construct personal narratives.
Affiliation
Department of Psychology, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, 01002, USA, mdschulkind@amherst.edu.
Journal Details
This article was published in the following journal.
Name: Memory & cognition
ISSN: 1532-5946
Pages:
Links
- PubMed Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22382648
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-012-0197-1
Medical and Biotech [MESH] Definitions
Personal Narratives
Works consisting of accounts of personal experience in relation to a particular field or of participation in related activities or autobiographical accounts.
Mental Retardation
Subnormal intellectual functioning which originates during the developmental period. This has multiple potential etiologies, including genetic defects and perinatal insults. Intelligence quotient (IQ) scores are commonly used to determine whether an individual is mentally retarded. IQ scores between 70 and 79 are in the borderline mentally retarded range. Scores below 67 are in the retarded range. (Joynt, Clinical Neurology, 1992, Ch55, p28)
Gender Identity
A person's concept of self as being male and masculine or female and feminine, or ambivalent, based in part on physical characteristics, parental responses, and psychological and social pressures. It is the internal experience of gender role.
Sexual And Gender Disorders
Mental disorders related to sexual dysfunction, paraphilias, and gender identity disorders.
Anecdotes As Topic
Brief accounts or narratives of an incident or event.
PubMed Articles
This study examined the role that mothers' scaffolding plays in the autobiographical memory (AM) and storybook narratives of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Seven 4-5-year-old childr...
Abstracting and extracting: Causal coherence and the development of the life story.
This study compared life story memories of emerging adults and early adolescents to other autobiographical memories. Participants described three scenes of their respective life stories, a high point,...
Becoming a better person: Temporal remoteness biases autobiographical memories for moral events.
Our autobiographical self depends on the differential recollection of our personal past, notably including memories of morally laden events. Whereas both emotion and temporal recency are well known to...
The current study investigated whether young adults' tendency to engage in autobiographical reasoning that described the self in positive and negative ways moderated: (1) the relationship between the...
Although the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is widely used its psychometric properties have rarely been investigated. This paper utilises data gathered from a 10-item written version of the AMT, c...
Clinical Trials
Gender Differences in Familial Risk
To develop, test, and apply comprehensive mathematical models for the interaction of genetic and environmental effect on cardiovascular risk with gender differences.
Postoperative Hyponatremia - Are There Gender Differences?
The proposed study will focus on anesthesia and anesthesia-induced hypotension as a possible cause for postoperative fluid retention and hyponatremia, and investigate gender differences in...
The purpose of the PACE-MI registry is: - Analyze beta-blocker dose response effect on outcome over two years - Explore gender and minority differences in beta-blocker utilization...
This study will describe the use of an intervention, developed by an organization called Positive Exposure, to improve self-perceptions among adolescents and young adults who may encounter...
Study to Determine Racial and Gender Differences in Platelet Aggregation
The purpose of this study is to see if there is a racial and/or gender difference in platelet aggregation.
