Why do we often remember the bad more than the good
As the saying goes: “when you’re right, nobody remembers. When you’re wrong, nobody forgets.” Unfortunately, that’s the sad reality of life. But, interestingly, there may be a reason why most people remember when bad things occur but have tough times remembering anniversaries and birthdays. It turns out that placing the bad more than the good comes naturally.
A new study suggests that we recall bad memories easily and in greater detail than good ones for evolutionary reasons. We recall bad memories easily and in greater detail compared to the god ones for perhaps evolutionary reasons. Negative emotions such as sadness and fear trigger increased activity in a part of the brain linked to memories. These emotionally charged memories are preserved in greater detail than happy or more neutral memories, but they may also be subject distortion.
Bad memories linger; researchers say using functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown adverse events stimulate activity in emotion-processing regions of the human brain, such as the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex.
The more these emotional points are triggered by different events, the more likely an individual is to remember specific details linked to the emotional aspect of the event, such as the appearance of the knife. On the other hand, the surround smelled like more mundane details like a street address, perhaps less likely to remember.
Researchers say this properly preserving bad memories may have evolved as a revolutionary tactic to protect against harmful or life-threatening events.
Losing money, being sacked by an employer, or being cheated on by a lover will have a more significant impact than winning money, receiving praise, or making new friends.
In an experiment in which participants lost or gained the same amount of money, the distress the participants expressed over losing the money was far more significant than the joy of achieving it. To put simply, you are more upset about losing $100 than you’re happy about gaining $100.” In addition to this, bad events wear off more slowly than good ones.
To show that your family’s (because we all battle these issues in our different families’) tendency to focus more on the negative isn’t unusual behavior. There is a preponderance of unpleasant memories, even among people who rated their childhood as happy and pleasant – which means there’s nothing strange about this behavior.
Similar to other quirks of the human psyche, there may be an evolutionary basis for all of these. Those who are more attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and would have increased the chances of passing along their genes. According to a famous saying: “survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes but less urgent about good ones.”
Also, perhaps the very fact that we tend to praise our children when they’re young – and for too many meaningless things. However, I would argue that they don’t get enough opportunity to build up resilience when receiving negative feedback. So, when next you hear this “when you’re right, nobody remembers. When you’re wrong, nobody forgets,” you should understand the human psyche behind it.
