Regulating Emotions May Affect Memory

Professor Koch's brain images, Caltech University.

Psychologists Jane M. Richards, Ph.D., of University of Washington and James J. Gross, Ph.D., of Stanford University sought to learn whether efforts to control emotion have cognitive consequences.

Their research was designed to answer two specific questions. Does emotion regulation lead people to remember events differently than if they had not attempted to control their reactions? And, if emotional regulation does have discernible cognitive consequences, are these consequences the same for all forms of emotion regulation?

Drs. Richards and Gross suggest that there are many ways to regulate one's emotions, but that some ways of doing so may be particularly likely to impair one's  ability to remember the details of an upsetting event. They believed that regulation strategies that occurred before the event, such as reappraisal or cognitive reframing (looking at a potentially emotional situation as a challenge rather than a threat) would have different cognitive demands than a strategy that was employed during the event such as emotional suppression.

They believe that expressive suppression, ("keeping a stiff upper lip") requires continual self-monitoring and self-correction which uses cognitive resources and therefore decreases the accuracy of the memory of the event. In contrast, the authors speculate, entering into a situation after having construed it in less emotional terms should preempt a full-blown response and thus eliminate the need for continual self-regulation, leaving memory for the details of the events that transpire intact.

Findings of their research, which was published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, were based on three lab experiments and extensive fieldwork.

Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done.

The two scientists found that people who tended to rely on expressive suppression in everyday life remembered fewer of the emotional events of their lives as compared to people who did not tend to rely on expressive suppression. As expected, however, the tendency to regulate emotions via reappraisal was not associated with any memory impairment.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health

The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 159,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students.

Dina Rashad, is an Egyptian writer resident in the U.S.