["Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nPrior research has established that individuals tend to preferentially remember self‐relevant information—a phenomenon known as the self‐reference effect. This effect is often modulated by the emotional valence of stimuli, typically manifesting as a self‐positivity bias. Despite the focus on collaboration, competitive contexts remain a critical yet overlooked avenue for investigation. This study examined how self‐referential memory processes operate in ongoing and post‐competitive social environments. Participants encoded personality trait adjectives—displayed in different colors and with varying emotional valences—using either self‐referential or other‐referential encoding strategies. They subsequently performed recall tasks individually or under competitive conditions, followed by a final individual recall phase. The data revealed a self‐reference effect in item memory (but not source memory) under nominal conditions, which was moderated by word color: the effect emerged for words presented in red but was reversed for those in green. Moreover, the self‐positivity bias was contingent upon both color and recall session. Notably, these effects diminished during social competition and its aftermath, a finding that diverges sharply from previous reports in collaborative settings. This suggests that collaboration and competition engage fundamentally distinct cognitive and motivational mechanisms, and that the self/other‐reference effect is not merely a function of social interaction per se. These findings challenge existing assumptions about the universality of self‐referential memory advantages and highlight the need for context‐sensitive models of memory.\n"]