Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy
Open Access

Abstract

Worrying Facilitates Correct and False Memories about Negative Information

Mieke Beckwé and Natacha Deroost

Despite the clinical relevance of worrying, its underlying cognitive mechanisms remain poorly understood. Eysenck postulates that high-worriers’ long term memory is characterized by tightly organized clusters with negatively valenced worry-related information, causing this information to be more readily accessible. Based on this premise, we expect (1) that high-worriers will more easily store negative worry-related information, but (2) that they are also more prone to produce false memories about negatively valenced worry-related information. We tested these hypotheses in a healthy student population using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The results of our study indicate that worrying is positively correlated (1) with the correct recognition of negative words, and (2) with the production of false recognitions of negative words. These results were unrelated to themes participants often worry about. As expected, there was no correlation between worrying and (false) recognition of positive or neutral words. In conclusion, these findings indicate that worrying is associated with memory biases for negative information. This supports the existence of negatively valenced clustered long term memory structures. However, no support was found for the idea that clusters are concentrated on specific worry themes high worriers frequently worry about.