KHAS Psychology Department Colloquium Series – Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Burcu Kaya Kızılöz

Kadir Has Üniversitesi Psikoloji bölümünün düzenlediği etkinlik serisinin yeni konuğu, Doğu Akdeniz Üniversitesi’nden Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Burcu Kaya Kızılöz olacak.

Dr. Kaya Kızılöz’ün “Memories of the ‘Othered’: Autobiographical Memories of Underrepresented Groups” başlıklı konuşmasını 21 Aralık Perşembe 13:30-15:00 arasında B-409’da dinleyebilirsiniz.

Özet: This talk aims to provide summarize two studies on  autobiographical memories of people who are seldom  investigated in the field. The first study examines the coming out memories and how these memories affect the well-being and psychological of health of gay and bisexual men. We asked 109 participants their most negative and positive coming out experiences and to fill out Centrality of Event, LGB identity, well-being, and depression scales. We found that only valence of negative memories was related to well-being scores, whereas valence of negative memories and a negative LGB identity was predictive of higher depressive symptomatology. These findings suggest that the way we remember our memories and how they are integrated to our identities affect our well-being and mental health.

In the second study we examined the life stories (LS) of inmates since imprisonment is considered as a traumatic experience (Armour, 2012) leading to changes in memory and LS. We examined past and future LSs of inmates (N = 95) and community members (N = 136) and found that there were significant main effects of imprisonment on the age of memory, valence, specificity and impact of LS events. Taken together, our study revealed that imprisonment is an anchoring event influencing how individuals remember and imagine LS events.