Negative Emotions and Memory

I have a big section in my memory book on the interference with memory formation caused by negative emotions. I have seen first hand how emotional crises cause the grades of college students to plummet. Whenever a good student suddenly starts making poor grades, I know this student has recently had an emotional trauma. Common problems for college students include trouble making friends, boy/girl problems, parent divorce, homesickness, financial worries―grades invariably suffer.

Recently, I had a reader of this blog challenge my position, pointing out that the most severe form of negative emotions, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), has as its main problem the inability to forget the events that triggered the PTSD. My reader is of course correct. But so also is all the evidence that negative emotions interfere with memory. How do I reconcile these incompatible views?

What is so well-remembered in PTSD are the traumatic events that caused the negative emotions. That is not the same as saying that PTSD patients have exceptional ability to remember other things or learn new things. I contend that their memory for new learning is impaired because of their distressed emotional state. The reason they remember the PTSD events so well is because they rehearse them so often.

All intense situations, even happy ones, tend to be well-remembered because of the intensity of the stimuli and the fact that such situations are repeatedly rehearsed. Rehearsal usually occurs immediately, because of the intensity of stimulation, and is repeated frequently, because the situation had such a big emotional impact. It is not so much the positive or negative aspect of the situation that matters for memory formation, but rather the timing and frequency of rehearsal.

Why do negative emotions interfere with new learning? I haven’t seen formal studies of this question, but what I know about memory allows some useful speculation. First, feelings such as worry, fear, depression, loneliness, and the like, have devastating effects on motivation. Under such conditions, nobody feels much like taking on challenges. Negative feelings also make it hard to pay attention to anything else besides what is causing the emotional distress. Attentiveness is pre-requisite for forming memories of new learning. Negative feelings lead to persistent negative thoughts, and thinking about one thing while trying to memorize another just doesn’t work. Negative feelings also erode confidence and sense of well being, both of which are essential for optimal memory ability. Why confidence and sense of well being are important is unclear, but I suspect they motivate a person to do what it takes to achieve personal goals. In the case of memory ability, it is easier for an up-beat person to take on learning challenges and to do the right things for promoting memory formation.