Examining the Associations Between Nonbelieved Memories and Memory Distrust, Self-Esteem, and Rumination

When beliefs in autobiographical memories are reduced while recollections remain relatively intact, a phenomenon termed nonbelieved memories (NBMs) unfolds. The current preregistered study (N = 104) used a 3-week longitudinal design to investigate the relationships between the frequency of recalled NBMs, memory distrust, rumination over autobiographical events, and self-esteem. Our analyses showed that memory distrust was a positive predictor for the initial recall of NBMs during the past 2 months at Time 1, but not for the follow-up recalls of NBMs during the past week at Times 2-4. Exploratory analyses showed that, at Time 1, self-esteem was negatively associated with the total number of NBMs. Furthermore, the tendency to report involuntary memories and rumination over memories was positively associated with the total number of NBMs. In addition, (in)voluntary autobiographical memory recall tendency was also a significant positive predictor for the total number of NBMs at Times 2-4. Our study is one of the first to show that NBMs might be uniquely tied to specific individual markers.