“Did I really used to be like that?” Self-views and memory across the 2020 U.S. presidential election

Self-views – or, how one perceives their own traits and values – change across social contexts. Yet, whether and how major societal events can alter self-views remains to be determined. In the current study (N = 193), we investigate whether a significant event – in this case, the 2020 U.S. presidential election – changes self-views. We also ask if the 2020 U.S. election acts similarly to an event boundary, and in turn impacts memory for self-views before the election (across an event boundary) vs after the election (within an event boundary). Including one timepoint before the election and three timepoints after it, we found that traits, values, and the valence of reported events changed more across the election than after it. When investigating memory for previous responses, we found that memory for ratings of values and the valence of events was worse across the election than after it, while memory for traits was unaffected. Our findings suggest that a) a significant event can substantially alter one’s self-views, and b) that the impact of an event boundary on memory for self-views may differ depending on how relevant the remembered content is to the event. More broadly, the findings suggest that moments of major societal change can also change how we view ourselves.