TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bentley, SV
AU  - Greenaway, KH
AU  - Haslam, SA
Y2  - 2020/12/21
Y1  - 2017/05/04
SN  - 1932-6203
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/11343/256865
AB  - People reliably encode information more effectively when it is related in some way to the self-a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect. This effect has been recognized in psychological research for almost 40 years, and its scope as a tool for investigating the self-concept is still expanding. The self-reference effect has been used within a broad range of psychological research, from cultural to neuroscientific, cognitive to clinical. Traditionally, the self-reference effect has been investigated in a laboratory context, which limits its applicability in non-laboratory samples. This paper introduces an online version of the self-referential encoding paradigm that yields reliable effects in an easy-to-administer procedure. Across four studies (total N = 658), this new online tool reliably replicated the traditional self-reference effect: in all studies self-referentially encoded words were recalled significantly more than semantically encoded words (d = 0.63). Moreover, the effect sizes obtained with this online tool are similar to those obtained in laboratory samples, and are robust to experimental variations in encoding time (Studies 1 and 2) and recall procedure (Studies 3 and 4), and persist independent of primacy and recency effects (all studies).
LA  - English
PB  - PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
T1  - An online paradigm for exploring the self-reference effect
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0176611
IS  - PLoS One
VL  - 12
IS  - 5
SP  - e0176611-
L1  - /bitstream/handle/11343/256865/PMC5417556.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
ER  -