How to reduce memories of negative events.
Consciously trying to suppress emotions helps people forget bad memories, research finds.
People in the study found it harder to recall a negative image a week later if they were told to suppress it.
The study’s authors also tested a form of implicit or unconscious suppression.
This involves suggesting to someone that they should forget a negative memory.
The results showed this also worked, but was not as powerful as explicitly trying to suppress a negative memory.
Professor Sanda Dolcos, who led the study, said:
“Our interest in conducting this study started with a desire to identify alternative ways to help people with depression.
Friends and family of depressed people often say, ‘Get yourself together and control your emotions,’ but this is not so easy.
That’s why we are interested in implicit, or unconscious, emotional suppression.”
Brain scans revealed that emotional suppression reduced activity in the amygdala, an area of the brain critical for emotional processing.
People reported finding the negative images less troubling when they were told to suppress their emotions.
Mr Yuta Katsumi, the study’s first author, said:
“People with depression or other mood disorders tend to have trouble distancing themselves from their negative memories.
If we can help them remember less or forget those negative memories, then maybe they can reallocate that attention to something more positive in their lives.”
The study involved 17 people having fMRI brain scans while looking at images.
People were tested again a week later to track changes in the brain.
Mr Katsumi said:
“Suppressing emotions appears to reduce negative memories, whether you do that consciously or unconsciously.
But explicit emotional suppression takes effort.
You have to have enough cognitive resources to do that, and people with clinical conditions might not be able to afford those resources.”
The study was published in the journal Neuropsychologia (Katsumi et al., 2018).
