Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Self-relevant information (i.e. related to the observer) is better remembered than other-relevant information. However, itremains to be seen how self-relevance during an initial social encounter can impact later face recognition. We presented63 participants with sentences describing an opinion varying in self-relevance (self/other-relevant) and valence (posi-tive/negative), followed by neutral face pictures of each opinion holder. Eye-tracking ensured the sentences were readand participants rated the valence and affective arousal of how each face made them feel. Participants then completed asurprise recognition task for the target faces. Recognition accuracy was greater when faces were preceded by self-relevantthan other-relevant sentences, and these faces were more arousing. Sentence self-relevance and valence interacted to affectparticipant valence ratings of the face, but not recognition accuracy. This indicates that initial social encounters can havea lasting effect on ones memory of another person, producing an enhanced memory trace of that individual.