Memory of Felt Emotion
Many researchers use self report measures of felt emotion as a manipulation check. This raises an interesting question and a possible methodological weakness: are people always accurate when they recall how they felt in the past? Several findings suggest this is not the case. For instance, in a study of memory for emotions in supporters of former U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot, supporters were asked to describe their initial emotional reactions after Perot’s unexpected withdrawal in July 1992 and again after the presidential election that November.
Between the two assessment periods, the views of many supporters changed dramatically as Perot re-entered the race in October and received nearly a fifth of the popular vote. The results showed that supporters recalled their past emotions as having been more consistent with their current appraisals of Perot than they actually were.
Another study found that people’s memories for how distressed they felt when they learned of 9/11 terrorist attacks changed over time and more so, were predicted by their current appraisals of the impact of the attacks (Levine et al., 2004). It appears that memories of past emotional responses are not always accurate, and can even be partially reconstructed based on their current appraisal of events.
Studies have shown that as episodic memory becomes less accessible over time, the reliance on semantic memory to remember past emotions increases. In one study Levine(2009) primes of the cultural belief of women being more emotional than men had a greater effect on responses for older memories compared to new memories. The long term recall of emotions was more inline with the primed opinions showing that long term recall of emotions was heavily influenced by current opinions.
Read more about this topic: Emotion And Memory
Famous quotes containing the words memory of, memory, felt and/or emotion:
“We find that even the parents who justify spanking to themselves are defensive and embarrassed about it....I suspect that deep in the memory of every parent are the feelings that had attended his own childhood spankings, the feelings of humiliation, of helplessness, of submission through fear. The parent who finds himself spanking his own child cannot dispel the ghosts of his own childhood.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“‘I’m sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because’Mthe brown eyes lower fell—
‘Because, you see, I love you!’
Still memory to a grey-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“So ‘a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face.... The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due—she reminds us too much of a prima donna.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)