Stress Strengthens Memory of first impressions of others' positive personality traits
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1
University of Trier, Institute of Psychobiology, Germany
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2
LACDR, Netherlands
We examined whether stress strengthens memory for newly-acquired impressions of other people's personality traits. Participants first completed an impression-formation task, viewing photographic portraits paired with behavioral self-descriptions that implied either positive or negative personality traits. Immediately after the impression formation task participants underwent a socially evaluated variant of the cold pressor stress test, or a control procedure. The next morning, participants again viewed portraits, half of these same as before and the other half novel in a randomized order. Now, each portrait was paired with a single trait adjective, the old portraits with an adjective matching the previous day’s personality description. Four minutes later participants viewed each portrait again and were asked to recall its paired trait adjective. Overall, participants recalled significantly more of the old than the novel portraits’ trait adjectives. The recall of trait adjectives of the old portraits was significantly higher in the stressed than control group. Remarkably, this holds true for positive personality traits only. We propose that stress-induced strengthening of memory of the first impressions of other persons’positive traits forms an important social cue for the formation of alliances in stressful circumstances.
Supported by the International Research Training Group "Psychoneuroendocrinology of Stress" funded by the German Research Foundation (GRK 1389/1) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.
Conference:
41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting, Rhodes Island, Greece, 13 Sep - 18 Sep, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster presentations
Citation:
Lass-Hennemann
J,
Kuehl
L,
Schulz
A,
Oitzl
M and
Schachinger
H
(2009). Stress Strengthens Memory of first impressions of others' positive personality traits.
Conference Abstract:
41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.211
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Received:
11 Jun 2009;
Published Online:
11 Jun 2009.
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Correspondence:
Johanna Lass-Hennemann, University of Trier, Institute of Psychobiology, Trier, Germany, lass1302@uni-trier.de