How Our Current Thinking Can Influence Our Memories Of Love

"Memories of the love we tend to feel in childhood towards our folk’s area unit among the foremost precious aspects of autobiographical memory we tend to might consider," says lead author Lawrence Patihis, scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi. "Yet our findings recommend that these recollections of affection area unit malleable -- that isn't one thing we'd need to be true."

"If you alter your analysis of somebody, you'll probably conjointly modification your memory of your emotions towards them and this can be true of memory of affection towards mothers in childhood," Patihis explains.

For their initial experiment, Patihis and coauthors Cristobal S. Cruz and Mario E. Herrera recruited 301 on-line participants. Some participants wrote concerning recent samples of their mother's positive attributes, like showing heat, generosity, competence, and giving sensible guidance; others wrote concerning recent samples of their mother's lack of those attributes. Participants in one comparison cluster wrote a few teacher and participants in another comparison cluster received no writing prompt the least bit.

The participants completed a survey assessing however they presently thought of their mother's attributes, together with her heat and generosity. They then completed the Memory of affection Towards folks form (MLPQ), that contained ten things designed to live the love participants remembered feeling for his or her mother at completely different ages (e.g., "During the entire year once you were in form, however usually on the average did you're feeling love toward your mother?"

The participants completed the measures once more a pair of weeks and four weeks when the initial session.

The results showed that the writing prompts influenced participants' current feelings and their recollections of affection. Specifically, participants UN agency were prompted to write down concerning their mother's positive attributes cared-for recall stronger feelings of affection for his or her mother in initial, sixth, and ninth grade compared with participants UN agency wrote concerning their mother's lack of positive attributes.

These effects endured at the 4-week follow-up for form recollections, however not for recollections of sixth grade or ninth grade.

Additional findings showed the consequences of the writing prompts weren't merely the results of changes in participants' mood.

The authors arrange to expand this analysis to explore whether a similar effect emerge for alternative feelings and target people and they are conjointly exploring whether successes in life may equally alter childhood recollections of emotion. additionally, the researchers hope to search out whether these effects may influence later behavior.

"The significance of this analysis lies within the new information that our current evaluations of individuals may be down if we decide to specialize in the negative, and this could have an aspect effect: the decreasing of positive aspects of childhood recollections," says Patihis. "We marvel if wide-ranging reappraisals of oldsters -- maybe in life or in medical care -- could lead on to intergenerational sorrow and estrangement. Understanding this delicate form of memory distortion is critical if we would like to forestall it."

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190516082402.htm