Life is Pleasant—and Memory Helps to Keep it that Way!

Abstract

People's recollections of the past are often positively biased. This bias has 2 causes. The 1st cause lies in people's perceptions of events. The authors review the results of several studies and present several new comparative analyses of these studies, all of which indicate that people perceive events in their lives to more often be pleasant than unpleasant. A 2nd cause is the fading affect bias: The affect associated with unpleasant events fades faster than the affect associated with pleasant events. The authors review the results of several studies documenting this bias and present evidence indicating that dysphoria (mild depression) disrupts such bias. Taken together, this evidence suggests that autobiographical memory represents an important exception to the theoretical claim that bad is stronger than good.

Distinct and common cerebral activation changes during mental time travel in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients

“…This tendency to provide a greater number of emotionally positive personal events was particularly important for future events. These results are in agreement with the robust positivity bias and the 'rosy future effect' described in the literature dealing with AM and EFT Rasmussen and Bernsten 2013;Walker et al 2003). Equivalent performance were obtained for the post-scan questionnaire variables between the two groups (with the exception of the amount of details, showing a lower score for MS patients).…”

The centrality of event scale: A measure of integrating a trauma into one's identity and its relation to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

“…Consistent with this view, most people seem to remember substantially more positive than negative events from their lives (for a review, see Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003). A conventional life script (at least in our culture) contains more positive than negative events ; the positive events are often about culturally expected role transitions, such as a graduation or a wedding.…”

“…Such events help to keep the life story thematically and temporally coherent (Luborsky, 1993). In spite of such an overall pleasantness bias in autobiographical memory (Walker et al, 2003), memories for traumas and highly stressful events are in most cases very well remembered when compared to other autobiographical events (e.g., Berntsen, 2001;Porter & Birt, 2001;Reviere & Bakeman, 2001;Rubin, Feldman, & Beckham, 2004). The literature on autobiographical memory and the availability heuristic suggests several possible functions for vivid and highly accessible personal memories.…”

Risky discounts: Do people prefer them on a per-item or per-purchase basis and why?

“…Given that the probability of achieving a high discount at least once is likely to be considerably higher than the probability of achieving a high discount overall (as in the earlier example), the narrow view may be a particularly rewarding way to frame the discount experience (for the general role of motivational framings in situations of risk, see Larrick, 1993). Simply put, it offers consumers a better chance of "hitting the jackpot" at least once, and hence of having a better story to tell themselves and possibly others about their shopping experience (for the likelihood of people utilising a positively reconstrued recollection, see for example, Walker et al, 2003).…”