KHAS Psychology Department Colloquium Series – Asst. Prof. Asst. Prof. Burcu Kaya Kızılöz

KHAS Psychology Department Colloquium Series host Asst. Prof. Burcu Kaya Kızılöz (Eastern Mediterranean University) on Thursday, December 21, between 13:30 and 15:00 at B-409 for her speech titled “Memories of the ‘Othered’: Autobiographical Memories of Underrepresented Groups”.

Abstract: 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.