The type of music that brings back the most vivid positive memories.
One of the simplest ways to feel happier right now is to recall a happy memory.
Re-experiencing a happy moment from the past can give you just the required boost.
And music can help you do that — so long as you choose the right type.
Research suggests both happy and peaceful music helps you recall positive memories.
But, if you listen to music that is sad or emotionally scary, it will help bring back the wrong sort of memories.
It seems that upbeat, happy music, in particular, gives the quickest access to happy memories.
The study’s authors write:
“…positive and highly arousing musical cues resulted in the quickest access to memories, and we observed a link between the emotional valence, but not the arousal, levels of the cue and the accessed memories.”
It might not be a surprise that happy music helps bring back good memories.
But there was one surprise: the type of happy music was important.
Peaceful music brought back the most vivid, positive memories.
Peaceful music is typically positive but not too exciting.
As Dr Signy Sheldon, the study’s first author, explained:
“High cue arousal led to lower memory vividness and uniqueness ratings, but both high arousal and positive cues were associated with memories rated as more social and energetic.”
Randomly played music — both positive and negative — was also successful in bringing back vivid memories.
Dr Julia Donahue, who co-authored, the study, said:
“It is possible that when cues were presented in a random fashion, the emotional content of the cue directed retrieval to a similar memory via shared emotional information.”
The study was published in the journal Memory & Cognition (Sheldon & Donohue, 2017).
