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When recalling autobiographical events, people retrieve not only the event details, but also the feelings they experienced. Past work with different measures of memories for feelings remain inconclusive, suggesting that people are either highly consistent or inconsistent with remembering feelings. The current study examined whether people are able to consistently recall the intensity of previous feelings associated with consequential and negatively valenced emotional events, i.e., the 9/11 attack (N = 769) and Covid-19 pandemic (N = 726). By comparing the initial and recalled intensities of negative feelings, we found that people systematically recall more intense negative feelings than they initially reported – overestimating the intensity of past negative emotional experience. The Covid-19 dataset further showed that people whose emotional well-being improved more demonstrate smaller biases in remembered feelings. Across both datasets, the remembered intensity of feelings correlated with initial feelings and were also influenced by current feelings, although the impact of the current feelings was stronger in the Covid-19 dataset than the 9/11 dataset. Our results suggest that when recalling negative autobiographical events, people tend to overestimate the intensity of experienced negative emotional experience with the degree of bias influenced by current feelings and well-being.

Reviews psychological approaches to collective memory

Despite considerable cognitive neuroscience research demonstrating that emotions can influence the encoding and consolidation of memory, research has failed to demonstrate a relationship between self-reported ratings of emotions collected soon after a traumatic event and memory for the event over time. This secondary analysis of data from a multi-site longitudinal study of memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked the question of whether emotional language use could predict memory over time. In the two weeks following the 9/11 attacks, participants (N = 691) wrote narratives about how they learned of the attacks and the impact of the attacks on them. Language features of these narratives were extracted using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count program and used to predict three types of memory: (1) flashbulb memory consistency, (2) event memory accuracy, and (3) emotion memory consistency. These outcomes were assessed at the time of writing, one, three, and 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regressions were used to narrow down language predictors examined. Results of linear mixed-effects models indicate that greater use of emotion words in narratives predicts decreased flashbulb memory consistency, event memory accuracy, and emotion memory consistency over time. Similarly, the use of cognitive processing words predicted decreased event memory accuracy, and emotional memory consistency. We also report other exploratory linguistic predictors associated with memory over time. These findings suggest that assessing language usage may serve as a sensitive means of measuring emotion for predicting its influence on memory over time.

Does the act of remembering or not remembering convey socially relevant information? The present work explored this question by examining the role flashbulb memories (FBMs) and memories for personal (MPEs) events play in social categorization and social identification. Study 1 investigated the extent to which Americans believe FBMs of both domestic and international public events and memories for lifescript events should be remembered by an American or a Briton. Study 2 built on Study 1 and examined whether these normative expectations serve as a basis for identifying someone as "American," "American immigrant," "Black American," "female," "religious," or "politically conservative." Results indicate that FBMs and MPEs affect social categorization and identification in distinctive ways. The role of FBMs as markers of social identity is discussed.