The multidimensional property of the self and self-reference effect

Abstract

It has been proposed that self-referent memory of verbal materials requires multidimensional processing that corresponds to the person's cognitive structure of the self (Horiuchi, 1996). In this study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that self-reference effect was due to information processing that was deeper and broader in self-referent than in semantic or other-referent memory. In Experiment 1, recall under self-reference condition was better than semantic condition. However, six-dimension processing condition, with extroversion, emotional stability, etc., was not significantly better than the self-reference condition. In Experiment 2, with mother as the other, other-referent memory was as good as that under three-dimension processing condition, using such dimensions of others as social desirability. However, recall under these conditions was inferior to that under self-reference condition. These results suggest that the self-reference effect is due to the multidimensional property of self cognition.