We assume distant negative events remembered in detail must have been extreme

By Alex Fradera If I insisted on telling you about a recent meeting I’d endured at work, and I went into vivid detail about every misunderstanding and awkward moment, you’d probably infer that I’d had a fairly bad experience. Now imagine I told you about the same events with the same level of detail, but I was talking about a meeting that happened more than a year ago. Now you’d probably get the impression that I’d had a truly awful time. The reason, as reported recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, is that we tend to interpret negative events recounted in detail as being more serious, the longer ago that they happened. Robert Smith and Norbert Schwarz began by asking a group of 133 undergraduates whose opinion they would value more when considering whether to try out a restaurant – someone who visited last week, or a year ago. Unsurprisingly, 99 per cent said they would put their faith in the recent visitor. In stage two of the study the researchers examined whether this hypothetical preference would pan out in practice. They asked 164 adults to imagine that their out-of-town friend Dan had frequented a local restaurant when passing through, and then to read his review of the place, which he’d just written today. After reading the review, the participants said what they thought of the restaurant. Crucially, some of the participants were told that Dan’s restaurant visit had happened just a week ago, whereas others were told that it had ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Memory Source Type: blogs