ScienceDaily: Was I happy then? Our current feelings can interfere with memories of past well-being
“"Happy people tend to overstate the improvement of their life satisfaction over time, whereas unhappy ones tend to overstate the deterioration of their level of happiness. This indicates a certain confusion between feeling happy and feeling better," explained authors Alberto Prati (University College London and University of Oxford) and Claudia Senik (Sorbonne University) in an interview.
Prati and Senik analyzed data from four longitudinal surveys to investigate how our current feelings influence our memories of past happiness.
Participants' graph selections were generally reflective of their past responses, Prati and Senik wrote in the article. People who reported higher current life satisfaction were more likely to select a chart illustrating continuous improvement. People with middling satisfaction were likelier to select a chart illustrating slight improvement, and people who reported lower current life satisfaction were likelier to select a chart illustrating dips in their well-being.
"People are able to recall how they used to feel about their life, but they also tend to mix this memory with the way they currently feel," Prati and Senik said."
Some Insights From This Article
Sometimes in the ways our mind works and how memory works we may not recall the times of happiness as well. This is because, this article finds, that our current emotional states usually pervade into our memories as well. Therefore when you’re feeling particularly down, memories of good times in the past may seem more mellow and not as happy as you may have thought when you were actually experiencing that event.
This can sometimes lead to the common perception of, “I never was really happy in the past” which can lead to “I’ll probably never be happy again”. But now this is often more so because of our current emotional state rather than our actual perceptions of happiness in the past or the future.
Full article is here!
#Emotions #Perception #Memories
I think this is spot on ....... when for example a relationship is having trouble if you look back while in that mind frame you see all the flaws and misdeeds and forget the laughs and good times.
Many of the most unhappy people also tend to dwell in past and either question their happiness or over blow what they thought was a happy time
@toughTiger6481
Exactly! There's something called state dependent effects in mental states in which you're more prone to think an remember your memories in which you felt the corresponding emotion you feel currently. Therefore we're more likely to think about the sad things when we're sad, happy when we're happy!
