Biomedical subjects

Barbara Woike

Publications and source records attributed to Barbara Woike.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Cognitive complexity in response to traumatic experiences.

Two studies examined how personality motives influence the perception of traumatic events in memory and how such perception may be linked to psychological distress. Participants completed implicit and explicit measures of agentic and communal motives. In Study 1, participants living in New York City at the time of the terrorist attacks wrote their thoughts and feelings about the events of September 11th. In Study 2, participants wrote about a personally traumatic experience. In both studies, they also completed questionnaires on psychological symptoms and stress-related growth. The memories were then scored for differentiation and integration. Agentic motives correlated with differentiated perceptions and differentiation was linked to dissociative symptoms in Study 2. Communal motives related to integrated perceptions, and integration related to stress-related growth in both studies. Findings suggest that motives play a significant role in the perception of traumatic and difficult experiences and that these perceptions may be differentially linked to psychological impact.

Cognition↗

PubMed2003

Implicit and explicit motives influence accessibility to different autobiographical knowledge.

In two studies, participants completed implicit and explicit measures of achievement and intimacy/affiliation motivation. In Study 1, they recalled an emotional and a self-descriptive memory. In both domains, implicit motive scores were higher when motivational content was present in the emotional memory. When motivational content was present in the self-descriptive memory, explicit motive scores were higher in both domains. In Study 2, participants recalled four autobiographical memories (two agentic, two communal) that were then categorized as specific or general events. Implicit motive scores were higher for participants who recalled specific agentic and communal events. Explicit motive scores were higher for participants who recalled general achievement events but not general communal events. Findings suggest that implicit motives are linked to accessibility of specific and emotional experiences, whereas explicit motives are linked more strongly to accessibility of specific and general memories that relate to the self-concept.

Adult↗