Cognition and Emotion

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Networks of self-defining memories as acontributing factor to emotional openness
Iliane Houle, Frederick L. Philippe, Serge Lecours & Josiane Roulez
To cite this article: Iliane Houle, Frederick L. Philippe, Serge Lecours & Josiane Roulez (2018)
Networks of self-defining memories as a contributing factor to emotional openness, Cognition andEmotion, 32:2, 363-370, DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1284045
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1284045

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COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2018VOL. 32, NO. 2, 363–370
https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1284045

BRIEF ARTICLE

Networks of self-defining memories as a contributing factor to emotional
openness
Iliane Houlea, Frederick L. Philippea, Serge Lecoursb and Josiane RoulezaaDepartment of Psychology, University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; bDepartment of Psychology, Universityof Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
ABSTRACTARTICLE HISTORY

Emotional openness is characterised by a capacity to tolerate threatening self-relevantmaterial and an interest towards new emotional situations. We investigated how
specific networks of memories could be an important contributing factor toemotional openness. At Phase 1, participants completed measures of personality
traits and emotional intelligence, described a self-defining memory, provided othermemories associated with it, and rated the valence of each of their memories. A
score assessing the complexity of this memory network, comprising the number ofmemories reported and their valence diversity, was created. Two weeks later, inlaboratory, participants watched an anxiety-inducing film and took part in aninterview assessing their emotional openness to the film. They completed a
cognitive task before and after the film to measure ego depletion. Controlling for
traits and emotional intelligence, memory network complexity was positively
associated with emotional openness and negatively with ego depletion. The mentalorganisation of self-defining memories thus appears to be a critical factor
contributing to emotional openness.

Received 5 July 2016
Revised 9 January 2017
Accepted 12 January 2017

Emotional openness is characterised by a capacity totolerate threatening self-relevant material, such as
negative emotions (Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005),
and by an interest towards new emotional situations.
It facilitates the integration and the organisation ofboth negative and positive aspects of new experiencesin the self (Weinstein, Deci, & Ryan, 2011), as well as theexpression, communication, and regulation of emotion(Weinstein & Hodgins, 2009). Emotional openness has
been found to be positively associated with important
outcomes, such as cognitive elaboration and complexity, non-avoidance of emotions (Lecours, Philippe,
Arseneault, Boucher, & Ahoundova, 2013), and bettermental health (e.g. Cramer, 1998). Although certain
defences are not necessarily maladaptive or conduciveto psychological symptoms, those that prevent
emotional openness are typically associated withlower interpersonal abilities and reduced psychological
growth (e.g. Beaulieu-Pelletier, Bouchard, & Philippe,2013). For instance, suppression, which consists in
CONTACT Iliane Houle

houle.iliane@courrier.uqam.ca© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupKEYWORDS

Self-defining memories;
emotional openness;memory network; egodepletion

inhibiting one’s subjective experience and expressionof an emotion, can be useful at short term, but it has
also been found to significantly hinder social functioning over time (e.g. Srivastava, Tamir, McGonigal, John, &Gross, 2009).
Emotional openness appears to be an important
capacity, but one for which the operating processes
are almost unknown. While certain individual characteristics, such as traits like emotional intelligence, areexpected to be related to emotional openness (Mayer& Salovey, 1995), traits do not reveal the processes
through which people appraise situations as threatening or not, so as to open or defend themselves to theemotionality of the situation.1 Based on recent contributions in the field of autobiographical memories(e.g. Demblon & D’Argembeau, 2016; Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, Lecours, & Lekes, 2012), wesuggest that the organisation of memories in thememory system may be associated with emotional
openness and operate as a key contributing factor to it.

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I. HOULE ET AL.

Autobiographical memories are constantly used toappraise novel situations. First, situations that matchthe content of a memory of a past event will trigger
that memory. Second, memories are organised into
networks and clusters in the memory system, as afunction of similar or shared themes, surface features(same location), and emotion (Demblon & D’Argembeau, 2016; Philippe et al., 2012). Consequently, whenever a memory is activated, other memories that areassociated with it are also triggered. The content of
this entire memory network is then used to appraise
the situation that triggered it (e.g. Philippe, Lecours,& Beaulieu-Pelletier, 2009). This process is thought toproceed mostly unconsciously (Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000).
Since the content of memory networks are used toappraise situations, the quality of these networks
should have an important impact on emotional openness. The activation of a memory integrated into alarge network comprising several memories, notably
memories of distinct emotionality, should provide
access to diverse alternatives about how to appraise
and act in the situation that triggered that memory
network. This should facilitate the person’s scope ofanticipation of the possible consequences of experiencing emotions, thus increasing her/his emotional
openness. Conversely, networks of memories comprising few memories or memories that include only one
emotional tonality (all positive or all negative), should
provide people with few alternatives on how to interpret situations, and therefore result in a rigid and nonnuanced appraisal of situations, which should prevent
emotional openness. Greater emotional openness
could also, in turn, help forge more complex anddiversified memory networks, which would further
increase emotional openness in an upward spiral.
Research has shown that there are important individual differences in the way people’s memory system
is typically organised, and that this has important consequences for emotional openness. Notably, selfdefining memories, that is, memories that are highly
significant for people, linked to their current goals
and concerns, and that people frequently think
about, appear to be a window into people’s memory
system, in terms of the way memories are typicallyorganised in that system. Indeed, characteristics ofthese memories typically reflect a level of people’s
identity and general functioning (Singer & Salovey,1993), and they are more likely to organise themselves in networks based on meaningful themes(Demblon & D’Argembeau, 2016). Moreover, self-

defining memories are often representative of othermemories in the memory system, and characteristics
of distinct self-defining memories have been foundto correlate with each other (Blagov & Singer, 2004).
There is empirical evidence suggesting that thegeneral organisation of self-defining memories could
be associated with emotional openness. Blagov andSinger (2004) have shown that the number of specificself-defining memories reported by participants was
negatively related to defensive functioning, thus supporting the existence of an association between thenumber of memories composing a network andemotional openness. Another study (Philippe et al.,2009) has found that the number of networked memories linked to a negative self-defining memory andthe positive intensity of these networked memories
were positively associated with adaptive emotion
regulation mechanisms and psychological resilience.
This suggests that networks of self-defining memories
can represent a window into how memories are typically organised in people’s memory system, and thatthe quality of these networks, in terms of being
extended and diversified, should be associated withemotional openness.

The present study
The purpose of the present study was to investigate
how the mental organisation of self-defining memories into networks could be associated withemotional openness to a specific emotion, namelyanxiety.2 Participants completed self-report scales
assessing personality traits and emotional intelligence,as they represent individual characteristics that havebeen frequently related to emotional openness,
although not empirically (e.g. Matthews, Roberts, &Zeidner, 2004). Participants described a self-defining
memory and other memories associated with it and
rated the valence characterising each memory.
Two weeks later, they watched an anxiety-inducing
film clip in laboratory. Two markers of emotional
openness towards this induction were used. First, participants were asked to complete a cognitive task
before and after the film clip. Self-regulation research(e.g. Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998)
posits that efforts put at modulating one’s degree of
emotional openness requires self-control, whichleaves fewer cognitive resources to exert self-control
again, therefore leading to a poorer performance ona subsequent task – a state of ego depletion. For
instance, studies showed that participants who were

COGNITION AND EMOTION

instructed to suppress their emotional reactions
during an upsetting film had a lower performance ata subsequent cognitive task than participants who
were not instructed to suppress or deny theiremotions (e.g. Baumeister et al., 1998). This suggeststhat a state of ego depletion at a cognitive task following an emotional induction could be used as a markerof emotional openness. Second, participants took partin a short semi-structured interview, in which they
were asked to describe their emotional experiencefrom the film. Judges rated participants’ level of
emotional openness to the film clip, thus providing
an observer-rated measure of emotional openness
based on verbal behaviour.
Given that self-defining memories are theorised asreflecting people’s general memory organisation, we
hypothesised that the complexity of the self-defining
memory network, as assessed by the number of memories composing that network and by the presence ofmemories of distinct valence (positive and negative),would be positively associated with emotional openness and negatively with ego depletion, over andabove the overall valence of the network. Moreover,giving that memories reflect the mental organisationof specific cognitions and are therefore not traits, we
expected these effects to be independent of personality traits and emotional intelligence, thereby showing
incremental validity.

MethodWe report here how we determined our sample size,
all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and allmeasures in the study.

Participants and procedures
Based on past research on the effect of networks of
episodic memories on diverse outcomes (Philippe
et al., 2009, 2012), the expected effect size was anticipated to be between small and medium ( f 2 = .075).
The power analysis suggested a sample size of 107
participants for a multiple regression with seven predictors (power = .80, alpha = .05). Accordingly, a totalof 127 students (104 women, 23 men) from a Canadian university were recruited through their university
e-mail to participate in a larger study on emotion andwell-being, in exchange of a $20 CAN incentive. Theirage ranged from 18 to 45 years (M = 22.51, SD = 4.79).
During Phase 1, participants completed an online
questionnaire that assessed their personality traits,

365

emotional intelligence, well-being (not analysed in
the present paper), and described their memories.
Two weeks later, in laboratory, participants completed
a measure of mood and a cognitive task. They completed a short interview about how they typicallyexperience anxiety and joy, which was not analysedin this study. Next, they were asked to watch an
anxiety-inducing film clip and, immediately afterwards, they completed the mood measure and cognitive task again. They were finally asked to express their
feelings and thoughts about the film clip within asemi-structured interview.

Measures: Phase 1
Personality traits. Traits were measured with the Big
Five Inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999). Only openness, neuroticism, and extraversion were considered,as they were the most closely related to the conceptsof emotional intelligence and emotional openness.
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .82 for openness,.87 for neuroticism, and .86 for extraversion.
Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence wasappraised through the Trait Emotional Intelligence
Questionnaire (TEIQue; Petrides, 2009). The TEIQue
includes 153 items rated on a 7-point Likert-type
scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .87.
Self-defining memory. Instructions were adaptedfrom previous studies on self-defining memories (Philippe et al., 2012; Singer & Salovey, 1993). Participants
were invited to describe:
A personal memory of an event that is at least one year
old which was significant (important) for you. This
memory should reflect your identity or who you areand should reveal something about how you perceive
yourself generally. Choose a memory that often comesto your mind. This memory can be either positive, negative, or both.

Networked memories. Participants were asked todescribe other personal memories directly or
indirectly related to the self-deﬁning memory they
had just reported. Participants were provided withthree textboxes, but were informed that they did nothave to use all textboxes and should only report theassociated memories that spontaneously came totheir mind (maximum of three). This measure wasadapted from the event cuing paradigm (Brown &Schopﬂocher, 1998).
Self-defining memory network overall valence. Participants were asked to rate the valence (–3 = very

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I. HOULE ET AL.

negative, +3 = very positive) of each memory. Valence
ratings of the self-defining memory and networked
memories were averaged to create an index representing the self-defining memory network overall valence,as done in past studies (e.g. Philippe et al., 2012).
Self-defining memory network complexity. The total
number of memories reported was first calculated.
All participants reported a self-defining memory, but
not all participants were able to retrieve networked
memories. Therefore, this score could range from 1
to 4. Second, a dichotomous variable was created toassess the presence or absence of diversity in thevalence of the memories reported. A score of 1 was
attributed to participants who reported either only
positive or negative memories in their network, anda score of 2 was attributed to participants who
described both positive and negative memories.
Those two memory network components were significantly correlated to each other (r = .30, p < .01). A scoreof complexity of the memory network was computedby multiplying the number of memories reported(from 1 to 4) and the network valence’s diversity (1or 2). This score could range from 1 to 8. Participants
who reported many memories, from both positive
and negative valence, had a higher score (memory
network of greater complexity). Participants whoreported a small number of memories, from only positive or negative valence, had a lower score (memory
network of lower complexity).

Measures: Phase 2
Anxiety. The Positive and Negative Affects Schedule(PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) was used
to measure emotions. Participants rated how they
were feeling at the present moment, on a 5-point
Likert scale (1 = very slightly or not at all, 5 = extremely).
Two measurement moments were used: (1) at the
beginning of Phase 2 and (2) right after the film induction. In this study, we were particularly interested in
the level of anxiety participants would experience following the film induction. Thus, an anxiety subscale
comprising five items (i.e. anxious, nervous, frightened, agitated, and fearful) was computed. Alphas
were .76 at Time 1 and .87 at Time 2.
Film induction. Participants watched an anxietyinducing film excerpt from The Silence of the Lambs(Saxon, Utt, Bozman, & Demme, 1991), lasting 3.29
minutes. The film scene was the basement chase,
which has been shown to successfully induce
anxiety (Gross & Levenson, 1995).

Markers of emotional openness
Verbal behaviour of emotional openness. The experimenter conducted a short semi-structured interview
with the participants regarding their emotional experience during the film. Participants were asked “How did
you feel during the film?” and could answer the question freely. They were then prompted to add to their
response with questions such as “What else can you
tell about your emotional reaction to this film clip?”and “Do you feel you have told everything about yourexperience?” Each interview lasted at least fiveminutes and was recorded. Afterward, the experimenter rated the extent to which the participants
demonstrated emotional openness (1 = not at all, 9 =very much) according to seven criteria (R = reversecoded): “The participant … ” (1) “admitted he/she felt
anxiety”, (2-R) “was defensive, avoided responding toquestions”, (3-R) “denied his/her feelings”, (4-R) “wasnot interested or motivated to talk about his/her feelings”, (5) “was honest about his/her feelings”, (6)“showed a complex emotional life”, and (7) “showed arich emotional representation of the film’s characters’
experience”. Emotional openness was calculated byaveraging all items’ scores, and the Cronbach’s alphacoefficient was .87. Those items were used in a previous
study (Lecours et al., 2013) to assess emotional openness and were adapted to correspond to anxiety.
Based on a factor analysis with Maximum Likelihood
and a parallel analysis, it was determined that only
one factor should be retained. All seven items showedstrong loadings (>.64) on that factor. A second coder
also rated 60% of the interviews based on their audio
recordings. Interjudge reliability was acceptable (intraclass r = .65). The interview transcripts were also analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count(Pennebaker, Booth, Boyd, & Francis, 2015), a softwarethat counts specific words in a given text. The
number of anxiety-related words used by participants
during their interview was correlated to emotional
openness (r = .35, p < .001). The total number of words
used by participants was also calculated.
Ego depletion. Ego depletion provided indicationsof participants’ degree of defensiveness towards thefilm clip. Their performance at a cognitive task that
requires self-control was measured before (Time 1)
and after (Time 2) the film. The difference in performance between the two tasks provided an indication of
the amount of cognitive resources invested by theparticipants to shield themselves from the anxietyinducing experience. The cognitive tasks consisted of

COGNITION AND EMOTION

367

measure of general cognitive abilities. This measurehas been found to correlate strongly with general intelligence (e.g. Colom, Rebollo, Palacios, Juan-Espinosa, &Kyllonen, 2004). Emotional openness and ego depletion
served as dependent variables and were regressed on
the three personality traits, emotional intelligence, andperformance at the cognitive task at Time 1 at Step 1,
on the memory network overall valence at Step 2, andon the memory network complexity at Step 3.
Results at Step 1 revealed that personality traits,
emotional intelligence, and the performance at thecognitive task were not associated with emotional
openness or ego depletion. At Step 2, the memory
network overall valence was also not associated withthe dependent variables. However, at Step 3, theself-defining memory network complexity was positively associated with emotional openness, explaining
7% of its variance, Fchange(1, 119) = 9.59, p < .01, andwas negatively associated with ego depletion, explaining 7% of its variance, Fchange(1, 119) = 9.26, p < .01.4
This suggests that the complexity of a self-defining
memory network is associated with emotional openness and ego depletion following an anxiety induction, and this independently of personality traits,
general intelligence, emotional intelligence, and theoverall valence of the network.

two parallel sets of the digit span subtest from (1) the
Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale (Thorndike, Hagen, &Sattler, 1986) and (2) the Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale – III (WAIS-III: Wechsler, 1997). The Stanford–
Binet was always administered before the induction
and the WAIS-III after, so that ego depletion scores
would be constant across participants and did notreflect the effect of the task administered second.
The ego depletion score was the number of sequences
correctly reported at Time 1 minus the number
reported at Time 2. A positive score was therefore asign of ego depletion.

Results
Manipulation checks on the anxiety induction
Paired t-test between the anxiety subscale of the
PANAS at Times 1 and 2 showed a significant increasein anxiety: t(126) = 5.78, p < .001, d = .60. Thus, themovie clip increased anxiety among participants, confirming that the induction of anxiety was successful.

Emotional openness and ego depletion
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, andcorrelational results of all study variables.3
Table 2 presents the results of two hierarchicalregression analyses, on emotional openness and ego
depletion, conducted to examine the incremental
value of the complexity of the self-defining memory
network over personality traits (i.e. openness, neuroticism, and extraversion), emotional intelligence, andthe memory network overall valence. Performance at
the cognitive task at Time 1 was also used as a control

Discussion
Self-defining memories appear to correspond to an
adequate representation of people’s general organisation of their memory system. Indeed, those memories
are specifically elected by people from their autobiographical knowledge base because they are

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations.
Mean SD
Emotional openness (1)6.26 1.59
Ego depletion (2)1.46 2.52
Number of memories (3)3.31 0.80
SDM network valence diversity (4)1.53 0.50
SDM network complexity (5)5.20 2.30
SDM network overall valence (6)0.43 1.90
Emotional intelligence (7)4.83 0.56
Performance at cognitive task, Time 1 (8) 19.54 3.54
Trait of openness (9)3.97 0.63
Trait of neuroticism (10)3.28 0.90
Trait of extraversion (11)3.24 0.82
Anxiety, Time 2 (12)2.22 0.89
Note: n = 127; SDM: Self-defining memory.
*p < .05.
**p < .01.

1
—
−.18*
.19*
.25**
.29**
−.04
−.02
−.12
−.10
.08
.05
.32**

2

3

—
−.21* —−.25**.30**−.29**
.70**
.16
.04
.02
.13
.16
−.10
.02
.15
−.08
−.08
−.07
.07
−.01
.11

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

—
.87** —
−.01
.02 —
.02
.09
.47** —
−.14
−.16
.09
.07
—
−.04
.03
.22*
.13
.15 —
.08
.02 −.44** −.70** −.05 −.06 —
.10
.09
.02
.36**
.03
.07 −.15 —.07.13 −.26** −.12−.07 −.02.17 .09

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I. HOULE ET AL.

Table 2. Hierarchical regressions analysis of personality traits, general intelligence, emotional intelligence, self-defining memory network overallvalence, and the self-defining memory network complexity on emotional openness and ego depletion.
Emotional openness
Model R
Step 1
Trait of openness
Trait of neuroticism
Trait of extraversion
Performance at cognitive task, Time 1
Emotional intelligence
Step 2
Self-defining memory network overall valence
Step 3Self-defining memory network complexity
Note: n = 127.
**p < .01.

.04

2

B

95% CI

Ego depletion
β

−.24
.29
.08
−.05
.30

[−.69, .22][−.15, .73][−.29, .45][−.13, .03][−.46, 1.05]

−.09
.17
.04
−.10
.10

.02

[−.16,.19]

.02

.04

2

Model RB

95% CI

β

.02
−.35
−.21
.12
−.27

[−.70, .74][−1.04, .35][−.80, .38][−.01, .24][−1.46, .92]

.01
−.12
−.07
.16
−.06

.22

[−.05, .50]

.17−.29**[−.48, −.10]

−.27

.04

.06

.11

.13
.19**

significant and represent their enduring concerns andidentity (Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004). The capacity
to organise these memories into complex networks ofmemories, comprising many memories from diverse
valence, seems to be associated with greater level of
emotional openness. Our study is the first, to ourknowledge, to suggest that the organisation of selfdefining memories in networks can act as an important individual difference contributing to emotional
openness. It also extends research on self-defining
memories that have shown the extensive predictive
value of self-defining memories for several outcomes
related to defensiveness and emotion regulation. It
is also possible that greater emotional openness contributes in return to create more extended and diverse
memory networks. Future research will be needed on
this issue.
Our findings also show that memory networks
characterised by lower complexity can have importantcognitive consequences in the short term, as the complexity of the memory network was negatively associated with a state of ego depletion after watching an
emotional film. It would thus appear that defending
oneself against one’s emotional experience has consumed cognitive resources, which were not available
afterward to perform well on a subsequent cognitivetask. It is still unclear what are the long-term consequences of such defensiveness. However, we can speculate, based on self-regulation research (Baumeister et al.,1998), that people characterised by a low level of
emotional openness who have to evolve in environments where they frequently have to face emotionalsituations may not be as effective as people who canremain open to their emotional experiences.
An apparently surprising finding is that trait
emotional intelligence was not significantly associated[.07, .31]

.28

with emotional openness or ego depletion. However,
if emotional intelligence has been found to berelated to other general personality traits (e.g. neuroticism, general emotional regulation abilities), there has
been little empirical work investigating how it can
predict actual reactions in specific contexts (Matthews
et al., 2004). Moreover, general personality traits, likeemotional intelligence, represent general action tendencies across situations, but may not be relevant topredict precise behaviours in specific situations. Conversely, memories reflect a particular level ofpeople’s personality and identity and are representations of the person contextualised in diverse situations (Conway et al., 2004). Our results suggest that
this particular level of personality can be a better predictor of emotional openness in response to a specificemotional situation than more general traits.
This study presents some limitations. First, themeasure of emotional openness was based onjudges’ observed evaluations of participants’ verbal
behaviour. Future research could also use physiological measures to complement this measurement ofemotional openness. Second, we suggested that ego
depletion was an indicator of defensiveness and suppression of emotions by participants, as it is theorisedby self-regulation research. However, we did not
directly measure suppression strategies. Our results
therefore only indirectly support that claim. Third,
the anxiety induction took place in laboratory and participants’ response to the interview might not represent the way they naturally respond to anxiety.
Social desirability or demand characteristics might
be at play in the present design. Fourth, causal conclusions cannot be drawn from the present study
design. Finally, the present findings need to be generalised with caution, as there were more females than

COGNITION AND EMOTION

males in our sample, and it was comprising university
students.

Notes
1. Emotional openness is a concept that differs from trait
openness to experience, which typically refers to individuals who are intellectual, imaginative, independent, andopen-minded, not necessarily individuals that are open
and tolerant towards emotions and self-threatening
material (John & Srivastava, 1999).
2. We assessed anxiety because our target participants werestudents. Anxiety is a frequently and commonly experienced emotion in this population, and a relevant one aswell (Bayram & Bilgel, 2008).
3. As can be seen in Table 1, both the number of memories
reported in the network and the diversity of valence
were positively associated with emotional openness andnegatively correlated to ego depletion, which supports
the rationale of their aggregation and our algorithm. It
should also be noted that averaging the z-scores of bothvariables or multiplying them leads to very similar results.
4. The same hierarchical regressions were also conductedwith only diversity of valence or the number of memoriesof the network at Step 3. Those two variables were individually positively associated with emotional openness andnegatively with ego depletion. However, the combinationof those two variables in an index of complexity
explained a greater portion of variance. Participants’age and sex were not associated with the dependant variables, and their inclusion did not affect the results significantly. Finally, the number of words used during theinterview was also unrelated to emotional openness (β= .07, ns), and all study results remained virtually thesame when controlling for this variable.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada 435-2012-1358
awarded to the second author and by a scholarship from theSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
awarded to the first author.

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