• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.29-43
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• 2003

This study examined the difference in memories for emotional stimuli. After giving participants the memory task instruction that they should remember the given stimuli, the emotion-induced photographs and the neutral photographs were presented. To minimize the possibility to regulate the expressions of their mood which induced by emotional stimuli and to find out whether the antecedent-focused emotion regulation process would damaged the memory of emotional stimuli in men, participant's memory was measured directly after the presentation of each photograph by free reflection method. Also Sex differences in memories about emotional and neutral stimuli were measured and compared. Women memorized stimuli more than men, and as expected, women remembered more about the emotional stimuli than neutral ones. The analysis of sex difference about central and peripheral features indicated that women remembered central features of emotional stimulus more than those of neutral ones, but that men had no difference between central features of emotional stimuli and those of neutral ones. These results showed that men's damaged memories of emotional stimuli were caused by the antecedent-focused emotion regulation process.