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Functions of remembering and misremembering emotion
Author(s) -
Levine Linda J.,
Lench Heather C.,
Safer Martin A.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1610
Subject(s) - psychology , forgetting , cognitive psychology , memory errors , cognition , autobiographical memory , episodic memory , context (archaeology) , motivated forgetting , coping (psychology) , recall , neuroscience , psychotherapist , paleontology , biology
Memory for the emotions evoked by past events guides people's ongoing behaviour and future plans. Evidence indicates that emotions are represented in at least two forms in memory with different properties. Explicit memories of emotion can be retrieved deliberately, in a flexible manner, across situations. Implicit memories of emotion are brought to mind automatically by cues resembling the context in which an emotional event occurred. One property they share, however, is that both types of memory are subject to forgetting and bias over time as people's goals and appraisals of past emotional events change. This article reviews the cognitive and motivational mechanisms that underlie stability and change in memory for emotion. We also address functions that remembering and misremembering emotion may serve for individuals and groups. Although memory bias is typically viewed as problematic, changes in representations of emotional experience often promote goal‐directed behaviour and facilitate coping with challenging situations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.