The Narrowing Self: Depressive Tendency Attenuates the Mother‐Reference Effect
Mingliang Gong, Shuanghong Chen · 2026
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Description
Mingliang Gong and Shuanghong Chen study how depressive tendency changes the place of one's mother in the self. Published in 2026, the work starts from a pattern in East Asia, where close others such as mothers are often folded into the self-concept. People with strong depressive tendencies draw that boundary more narrowly.
Across three experiments, people with low depressive tendency recalled mother linked items better than items linked to others, an effect the authors call the mother-reference effect. People with high depressive tendency showed no such gain, or a weaker and later one. Brain wave measures told the same story, with a delayed response. The results suggest low mood shrinks the self's reach.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Mingliang Gong, Shuanghong Chen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 50 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |