I am a PHD student, focusing on the idea of the human self and how it relates to autobiographical memories. What happens with the view of ourselves when we explicitly acknowledge that our actions were inconsistent with how we would like to see ourselves, and how does the resulting increased self-awareness influence how we remember a particular episode? For my doctoral thesis, we developed two paradigms that address this question. Within these studies we investigate how memories that are incongruent with the self-image could undergo specific transformations of the narrative content of what is remembered as well as of phenomenological characteristics including visual perspective and emotional valence. 

In addition to these experimental studies, we developed a comprehensive theoretical framework on the impact of the self-model on episodic memories during scenario construction. This framework aims to clarify several important conceptual questions that emerged during the preparation of the experimental studies. Reversely, the framework allows for more specific predictions that can be addressed experimentally; depending on the empirical findings, the framework will then either be (provisionally) confirmed or will need to be updated. In this framework, we first elaborate our theory of the self-model comprising both descriptive and normative aspects.