Individual differences in STWM biases.

The cognitive model of depression hypothesize that depressed and cognitive vulnerable individuals are prone to emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory which could exacerbate distress. In one project, we studied the effects of negative cognitive style, sad mood, and facial affect on the short-term memory for the self-face and for other faces. Following a sad mood induction, we examined the effect on working memory of an incidental association between facial affect, facial identity, and head-pose orientation. We found that participants high in negative cognitive style who experienced higher levels of sadness displayed a stronger self-face advantage (SFA) for sad expressions than happy expressions. The remaining participants displayed an opposite bias (a stronger SFA for happy expressions than sad expressions), or no bias. These findings highlight the importance of trait-vulnerability status in the working memory biases related to emotional facial expressions.

• Caudek, C., & Monni, A. (2013). Do you remember your sad face? The roles of negative cognitive style and sad mood. Memory, 21(8), 891-903.