DO PEOPLE FORGET THE UNPLEASANT?

Kaikoura Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 38, 9 May 1924, Page 4

DO PEOPLE FORGET THE UNPLEASANT?

i OPTIMISTS AND PESSIMISTS Are disagreeable things automatically consigned to the background of the mind, so that our memories tend to be ' mainly pleasant ? This has been assert- ' ed by some psychologists (says the | Literary Digest) on the authority of experiment. Dr. Donald A. Laird , Lecturer in Psychology in the University of lowa., contributes to the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Chicargo) an article in which he summarises an investigation of his own, from which iie concludes that the memory of un- | pleasant or pleasant events or objects j depends much upon personal tempera- ’ ment, ami that there is no evidence that the pleasant is more generally remembered than the unpleasant. Taking up first the investigations of his predecessors, Dr. Laid gives their results in brief, as follows: — Ranschburg gives unequivocal emphasis to the fact that inhibition in learning may depend upon emotional tone. Meumann also of the opinion that pleasantness facilitates the function of memory. Colegrove attempted a di ret study of any influence winch pleasantness or unpleasantness might ( have upon memory. He found a predominance of pleasant memories over unpleasant. Sex differences were also obtained,female -subjects have relatively more unpleasant recalls than males Another study of the influence of affective factors in recall was made by Myers. Again the pleasant experiences recalled exceeded greatly the unpleasant. Ilollingworth presents a general discussion, the trend of which is to indicate that the disagreeable oblivesees more than the agreeable. This general problem has been approached from another angle by Tait, who investigated the speed with which lists of words were learned. It was found that feeling-!one, either pleastint or unpleasant, increased the rapidity of memorising. The pleasant lists, however, had much the greater bettermenton learning, while the unpleasant words 1 were in turn learned easier than those of an indifferent feeling-tone. Another angle from which the relationship between memory and feelingtone has been attacked is that of the reproduction or association time. Birnbaum used stimuli consisting of groups of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent words* with five hospital at- I fondants serving as his subjects. He ( found no charactristie or significant t difference from group to group. Tolman | and Johnson performed essentially the same experiment, but found th a'. the I unpleasant words tendd to lengthen the association time. This lengthning it: greater in the case of females than Henderson had ten subjects give one hundred incidents from their past lives Then they were rated by the subject according to the affective-tons of the incident. Their spontaneous recalls distributd thmslvs as follows: — 55.- per cent, of agreeable incidents. 11.8 per cent of indifferent incidents. .33.1 per cent of disagreeable incidents Henderson does not interpret these • results as meaning that the pleasant tends to be remembered more easily than the unpleasant. Rather he looks upon these results as indicating rhe obvious fact that the majority of the experience of life are not disagreeable, and accordingly the disagreeable are not in the majority in recall. He is further inclined Io think that if it were really known what portion of the total experiences had been pleasant, and which unpleasant, it would be found that there had really been a predominance of recall of the unpleasant. Dr. Laird’s own study is concerned | he says, chiefly with the personal equation, as it might be called, which seems to facilitate recall of the unpleasant or the unpleasant, as the case may bo. A group of 62 students wore told to write as rapidly as possible the names of the first ten people they could think of. The only restriction was that they limit their recalls to persons with whom they were acquainted. At the close of the hour, and unexpectedly, they were told

t.o write on another sheet the. names of ten people, arranged in order of likcablencss, the person whom they liked the most being numbered one. If the emotional tone of past experiences docs have any influence upon memories, one would expect to find a difference in the recall of those groups. Dr. Laird writes:— '‘Since the students did not arrange the ten spontaneous recalls in the order of decreasing liking-, not all of the names arranged in order of liking appear on the recall lists. Exact coinc'llencc would hi.vc gi' -.n a correspondence in 620 instances. In actuality, however, ther were only ISS of the names on the lists appearing in the list arranged according ro liking. This is a per cod': of coinc id one? of about Examining the throe temperanientgroups w<* find minor, but significant liffeieiu es. We find tint the most, liked person was thought of on Ihc spontaneous, free recall over five times as frequently as the most disliked persons were. The recalls of the group "■no designated themselves and wore also classified by their follows as characteristically optimistic are found lump oil toward the liking end. Contrasted with these two groups an- the pessimists with their recalls lumped toward ho u i< k and lower cud of the scale. “Assuming that the op l .'ini-Js have bad nx ic pleasant experiences than the pessimi.'-ts or the mixed gro ips, we find •hat li< m resells do imi necessarily iud.cate the oidivescenc,: of the dis : io:i! : »>g. Rec;::li of pleasant or tini < nsant I-; t? b<* largely a ?-.•••••» of I' f- ■•anio. I. bluin' 7:2 per era: «•' -.he n.Tual r< calls af th gro:q. of op limi.-ts were distri’ i. d na.ong the ■ kai'd e. ires. Wi’.li this '-nmo gro ir- rdio-it ci.ly 15 ••eet of 1 ; ho • i ■ :il recalls were i noiic the !<>■.•. er four ponits in the scale of likes. The mixi'd dispositions have (id per cent of recalls among the higher four, ami I.S among the lower four. 'fhc pessimists have 27 per cent of their recalls among the upper four points on the scab' of likng and 45 per cent among tin* lower four. ’ ’