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The self-reference effect (SRE) is a memory advantage produced by encoding information in a self-relevant manner. The "evaluative" SRE arises when people engage in explicit self-evaluation/reflection to process to-be-remembered items, while the "incidental" SRE occurs when self-referential information (e.g., one's own name) is co-presented with to-be-remembered items but is irrelevant to a given task. Using a divided-attention paradigm, the present study examined potential differences in the attentional requirements of the evaluative and incidental SREs. During encoding, personality-trait words were presented simultaneously with the participant's own or a celebrity's name. The participants' task was either to evaluate whether each word described themselves/the celebrity (evaluative encoding) or to indicate the location of each word (incidental encoding), in the presence or absence of a secondary task. A subsequent recognition test with a remember/know procedure showed better overall recognition and enhanced episodic recollection for words presented with one's own name vs. another name, with this SRE being larger in the evaluative than incidental encoding condition. Critically, divided attention at encoding attenuated the magnitudes of both evaluative and incidental SREs to a comparable degree in overall recognition and episodic recollection. These findings suggest that both the evaluative and incidental SREs are resource-demanding, effortful mnemonic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the self-reference effect in memory to the level of social identity, previous research showed that processing information in reference to one's ingroup at encoding enhances memory for the information (i.e., the group-reference effect). Notably, recent work on the self-reference effect has shown that even simply co-presenting an item with self-relevant vs. other-relevant information (e.g., one's own or another person's name) at encoding can produce an "incidental" self-memory advantage in the absence of any task demand to evaluate the item's self-relevancy. In three experiments, the present study examined whether this incidental self-memory advantage extends to the level of social identity using newly created, minimal groups (Experiments 1 and 2) and pre-existing groups (Experiment 3; one's own or another study major). During encoding, participants judged the location of each target word in relation to a simultaneously presented cue (Ingroup-cue or Outgroup-cue in Experiments 1 and 3; Ingroup-cue, Outgroup-cue, or Neutral-cue in Experiment 2). Consistent across all experiments, a subsequent recognition test revealed a significant memory advantage for words that were presented with the Ingroup-cue. Crucially, this incidental ingroup-memory advantage was driven by ingroup-memory enhancement rather than outgroup-memory suppression relative to memory for words presented with the Neutral-cue (Experiment 2), and was positively correlated with self-reported levels of ingroup identification (i.e., self-investment to one's ingroup; Experiment 3). Taken together, the present findings provide novel evidence that mere incidental associations between one's ingroup and to-be-remembered items in a non-referential, non-evaluative encoding context can produce a memory advantage for the items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]