When Self-Reference Diminishes in Competition: The Enduring Impact of Emotional Valence and Color.

Abstract

Prior research has established that individuals tend to preferentially remember self-relevant information-a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect. This effect is often modulated by the emotional valence of stimuli, typically manifesting as a self-positivity bias. Despite the focus on collaboration, competitive contexts remain a critical yet overlooked avenue for investigation. This study examined how self-referential memory processes operate in ongoing and post-competitive social environments. Participants encoded personality trait adjectives-displayed in different colors and with varying emotional valences-using either self-referential or other-referential encoding strategies. They subsequently performed recall tasks individually or under competitive conditions, followed by a final individual recall phase. The data revealed a self-reference effect in item memory (but not source memory) under nominal conditions, which was moderated by word color: the effect emerged for words presented in red but was reversed for those in green. Moreover, the self-positivity bias was contingent upon both color and recall session. Notably, these effects diminished during social competition and its aftermath, a finding that diverges sharply from previous reports in collaborative settings. This suggests that collaboration and competition engage fundamentally distinct cognitive and motivational mechanisms, and that the self/other-reference effect is not merely a function of social interaction per se. These findings challenge existing assumptions about the universality of self-referential memory advantages and highlight the need for context-sensitive models of memory.