生物谷報(bào)道：記憶的確是神奇的東西,，人們要么忘卻了不該忘的事情,，要么是想拋開的回憶卻無論如何也擺脫不掉。9月的《實(shí)驗(yàn)社會心理學(xué)雜志》(Journal of Experimental Social Psychology)即將發(fā)表的一項(xiàng)最新研究,，為“越想忘的越忘不掉”找到了科學(xué)的解釋,。
領(lǐng)導(dǎo)該項(xiàng)研究的是美國北卡羅萊納大學(xué)的心理學(xué)家Keith Payne。他和同事發(fā)現(xiàn),，情緒記憶是最難刻意忘掉的,，尤其當(dāng)這種記憶源于視覺線索。
Payne表示,，主動忘卻是一種適應(yīng)性表現(xiàn),，比如，人們常常要忘掉錯誤的認(rèn)識,、朋友的舊電話號碼或者更改前的會議時間。主動忘卻有助于大腦的記憶存儲系統(tǒng)更新新的信息,。不過,，Payne和同事在實(shí)驗(yàn)中發(fā)現(xiàn)，即使是輕微而溫和的情感記憶事件,，比如在考試分?jǐn)?shù)不理想或者在工作中受到批評,，都是很難被忘記的。
研究人員共調(diào)查了218位參與者在看過一些照片后的反應(yīng),，而不是通常使用的文字內(nèi)容,，因?yàn)閳D像往往要比文字更容易讓人印象深刻。他們注意到,，那些調(diào)動了參與者情緒因素的照片內(nèi)容比起平凡的內(nèi)容,，不容易被刻意忘卻,。此外,，令人愉快和令人不悅的情緒記憶同樣具有這種抵抗力。
Payne認(rèn)為,，人們要刻意忘卻一件事情的前提條件就是要從精神上和與事件相關(guān)的信息完全隔離開來,。然而，記憶中的情感因素往往會破壞這一過程,。他說,，“人們的情緒記憶在形成時，與自身生活的許多部分都發(fā)生了關(guān)聯(lián),，因此要隔離它們很難,。一旦人們要刻意忘卻這些記憶，情感因素就會使它突顯出來,，因而更加難忘,。”
不過,，Payne強(qiáng)調(diào)，這一結(jié)果并不意味著情緒記憶永遠(yuǎn)不會被主動忘卻,。只要遺忘的動機(jī)足夠強(qiáng)烈,，人們完全可以超越情感因素的影響。(科學(xué)網(wǎng) 任霄鵬/編譯)
原始出處:
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 43, Issue 5, September 2007, Pages 780-786
Emotional constraints on intentional forgetting
B. Keith Payne, a, and Elizabeth Corrigana
aDepartment of Psychology, Campus Box 3270, Davie Hall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
Received 20 October 2005; revised 13 July 2006. Available online 12 September 2006.
Abstract
One way people control the contents of their minds is intentional forgetting—voluntarily forgetting events after they have happened. The events people would most like to forget are unpleasant and emotional. This study used a directed forgetting procedure with emotional and neutral pictures to examine whether people can intentionally forget emotional events as easily as mundane ones. When the to-be-forgotten list was neutral, participants showed successful intentional forgetting. But when the to-be-forgotten list was emotional, directed forgetting failed. Results contribute to understanding the ways that emotion constrains mental control by capturing mental processes including memory retrieval. Emotion may short-circuit attempts to forget those parts of the past people would most like to forget.
Keywords: Forgetting; Emotion; Memory
