It is often said that emotions, especially negative ones, can affect memory. But is this really the case? A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests otherwise: its researchers explain that emotions play a key role in the ability to remember contextual details.
Experts from Duke University and the University of Illinois, among others, highlighted this by conducting studies using behavioural and attentional analyses as well as brain-imaging data. Their goal was to understand the extent to which our emotions influence our ability to recall certain details.
Their starting point was the observation that, when we live through an emotionally rich experience such as a birthday party or a car accident, we remember more about the main event (the opening of the presents, the collision between the two cars, etc.) than the peripheral details.
Still, it is quite possible to recall more contextual details from the event thanks to our emotions, the experts suggest. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed that the brain regions involved in emotional processing and those dedicated to memory can enter into “dialogue” with each other, thus helping to consolidate contextual memories.
Indeed, our emotions enable us to retain or forget certain memories – after all, emotional material is more resistant to being forgotten than more neutral material. But our emotions can have a negative influence on our memory. Several scientific studies have shown, for example, that stress can trigger a decline in memory performance.
Still, the findings of this research are encouraging: they could enable psychologists to develop innovative approaches to help older people or those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to regain control of their memory by putting their emotions to use.
“The story of emotion-memory interactions is still unfolding. We demonstrated the circumstances where you can prevent forgetting contextual details, which not only disrupts the status quo at the theoretical level, but also has practical implications about what you can do to control, channel and capitalise on the emotions’ energy to remember better,” study author Florin Dolcos concluded.