Fear and Anger at Retrieval Impact Memory Performance
Loading...
Date
2024
Authors
Hall, Leah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Negative emotions have been shown to affect memory formation, but research on how emotion affects memory retrieval is limited. The current study attempts to answer how fear or anger at retrieval affects how well neutral information is remembered. Participants read a neutral story and then completed a 2-minute distractor task. To induce the intended emotion, the participants watched a 2-minute emotion inducing video that put them in one of three conditions, fear, anger, or no emotion; this video was followed by two memory tests measuring the retrieval of the neutral story using a free recall and multiple-choice memory test. Finally, they self-reported on the emotions they felt from watching the video. A total of 261 participants were recruited from the UO Human Subjects Pool. Of those participants, 87 did not effectively complete the distractor task or the memory tests and were excluded from the data. Analysis of every participant regardless of how well the video created the intended emotion showed no significant results. However, within the 72 participants who felt the intended emotion from their video condition, there was a significant main effect of emotion on the participant’s ability to recall exact words from the neutral story. The neutral condition performed the best, then fear, then anger. A third exploratory analysis sorted participants by which emotion they reported as feeling the strongest, and this analysis showed that those who felt sadness recreated the neutral story better than those who felt anger. This study has implications for real world situations, such as eyewitnesses in court who are put in emotionally charged situations and asked to remember an event.
Description
29 pages
Keywords
Psychology, Neuroscience, Memory, Emotion, Episodic