Individual Differences in Remembering Interpersonal Conflict: An Exploratory Study

This study aims to examine how individual differences (specifically depression, anxiety, neurotype, and gender) are associated with memory for scenarios of interpersonal events, and whether these associations vary across emotional context and interview format. Previous studies have shown that memory retrieval does not occur uniformly across individuals; trait-level differences such as anxiety and depression are known to shape how events are encoded and later retrieved. However, much of the existing research in this area has focused on clinical or highly selected samples, limiting applicability to everyday and forensic contexts. By drawing on a non-clinical student sample, the present study aims to examine associations between a more natural variation in individual differences and memory performance. In this experiment, participants aged 18–45 will be exposed to either negative or neutral virtual reality scenarios. After viewing the scenarios on Days 1 and 2. On Day 3, participants will complete a written free recall task in which they describe what they remember from each scenario, and subsequently compete either a free recall or timeline-enhanced interview on Day 8 or 9. Their recall (written statement and transcribed interview) will be coded using a predefined checklist of the scenario to determine a written statement and interview memory score for each participant. This experiment is related to Rubínová et al. (2024, osf.io/at5f2) and we use the same data. I joined the team during the data collection process but have not looked at any of the data at the time of preregistration. Given mixed findings in the existing literature, particularly within subclinical samples, it was not possible to derive clear directional hypotheses for all individual difference variables. Furthermore, the present study is not powered to robustly test interaction effects. For these reasons, analyses examining associations between individual differences, emotional context, and interview format were treated as exploratory. The findings will contribute to ongoing research on emotion and memory, particularly in relation to how individual differences shape recall.