Attitudes toward the war in Iraq: Memory bias due to affect
Authors
Hristic, Ana
Barrett, Lisa Feldman
Ross, Michael
Tugade, Michele
Rybak, Martin
Sekerka, Leslie
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2004
Date
Publisher
Language
Abstract
We studied the influence of emotion on people's
recollection of their attitudes toward the war in Iraq.
Participants were 395 North American individuals who
completed a longitudinal web-based study. We examined how
emotional reactions and attitudes at the beginning of the Iraqi
war (T1) influenced people’s recollections of those attitudes at
the war’s conclusion, defined by the official withdrawal of U.S.
troops from combat (T2). We predicted and found that
emotional reactions to the war at T1 highly correlate with
attitudes at T1, and in some cases influenced the recall of those
initial attitudes at T2 (e.g. the more angry participants were
about the war at its start, the more they remembered holding
President Bush responsible for it when it ended, over and above
what their attitude actually was at T1). Implications for
understanding the effect of emotion on autobiographical
memory are considered, and future directions are discussed.
Type
Poster
Description
Poster
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Sponsors
support of the National Science Foundation: NSF grant BCS-0204431
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Citation
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.