The Narrowing Self: Depressive Tendency Attenuates the Mother-Reference Effect.

Overview

1. School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China, jxnu.edu.cn

Abstract

In East Asia, close others (e.g., mothers) are often integrated into the self‐concept. However, individuals with high depressive tendencies (HDTs) exhibit a self‐boundary that is less inclusive of close others. The present study investigated whether HDT individuals in East Asian cultures include their mothers in their self‐concept. Experiment 1 revealed that low depressive tendency (LDT) participants showed a higher recognition accuracy for items transiently associated with mother compared to items transiently associated with others, indicating a mother‐reference effect (MRE), whereas HDT participants did not show this effect. Experiment 2 used the recollection/familiarity (R/K) paradigm to distinguish memory processing depth. The results revealed that LDT exhibited an MRE comparable to the self‐reference effect (SRE), whereas HDT participants showed a weaker MRE. HDT participants showed an MRE only in K responses, suggesting that their memory advantage for mother‐related information relies more on shallow processing. Experiment 3 employed the event‐related potential (ERP) technique with a shape‐label matching task, in which participants judged whether a geometric shape matched a subsequently presented identity label (self, mother, or stranger). The results showed that LDT participants demonstrated a MRE in both the N1 (70–120 ms) and N2 (220–280 ms) component amplitudes. In contrast, HDT participants showed this advantage only in the N2 component, suggesting delayed and shorter‐lasting MRE. Together, these findings demonstrate that depressive tendencies impair the MRE, reflecting reduced integration of mothers into the self.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• osf:6xzn2 — at OSF; found in “Data Availability Statement”

Data Availability Statement

The data for the experiments reported here are available on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/6xzn2/overview?view_only=8dc25b87dc5c443197b982f4cac1a881.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 2, 28 September 2026

• Issue: — → 1
• Funding: added National Natural Science Foundation of China: 32460204

Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 2 authors, 4 keywords, 10 MeSH terms, 59 references.

Cite

This paper

Gong, M., & Chen, S. (2026). The Narrowing Self: Depressive Tendency Attenuates the Mother-Reference Effect. Depression and anxiety, 2026(1), 2882097. https://doi.org/10.1155/da/2882097

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