Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional words more vividly remembered than neutral words?
- 1 December 2003
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Memory & Cognition
- Vol. 31 (8), 1169-1180
- https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03195800
Abstract
Individuals are more likely to remember negative information than neutral information. In the experiments reported here, we examined whether individuals were also more likely to remember details of the presentation of negative words, as compared with neutral words. In Experiment 1, the remember-know procedure was used to examine the effect of emotion on the vividness of an individual’s memory, showing thatremember responses were more frequently assigned to negative words than neutral words. In Experiment 2, a source memory paradigm was used, and again, evidence that individuals’ memories were more detailed for negative than for neutral words was found. In Experiments 3–6, we examined the relative contribution of valence and arousal, finding that both dimensions increased the vividness of remembered information (i.e., items with valence only and those that elicited arousal were better remembered than neutral information) but that the effect was greater for words that evoked arousal than for those with valence only. The results support a qualitative, as well as a quantitative, memory benefit for emotional, as compared with neutral, words.Keywords
This publication has 58 references indexed in Scilit:
- Attentional control of the processing of neutral and emotional stimuliCognitive Brain Research, 2002
- Are emotionally charged lures immune to false memory?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2001
- Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1992
- The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992
- Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative social information.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1991
- Eye fixations and memory for emotional events.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1991
- Sex differences in memory for eroticaCognition and Emotion, 1990
- Some facts about "weapon focus."Law and Human Behavior, 1987
- A retrieval model for both recognition and recall.Psychological Review, 1984
- Flashbulb memoriesCognition, 1977