ABSTRACT
As you may have noticed, most of the studies discussed thus far have examined the quality or accuracy of negative arousing emotion on memory. This focus on the negative is likely due to a number of factors. First, many theories of emotion’s modulation of memory have stemmed from the animal literature, in which paradigms such as fear conditioning have been the norm. Perhaps because of this, many theories about emotion’s influence on memory have focused specifically on negative arousing emotions, with little discussion of what happens when something is positive or when something is negative but not particularly arousing. Second, negative arousing emotions tend to be easier to elicit than other types of emotions. This is probably not true in everyday life, but it certainly is true with regard to the types of stimuli that we show participants in the laboratory. It is relatively easy to find images of spiders, snakes, or injured people, that will cause people to have a strong negative response. In contrast, it can be quite difficult to find positive stimuli that will lead to high-arousal feelings of pleasure. Many of the positive stimuli instead elicit feelings of serenity. Similarly, it is harder to find stimuli that are negative but that do not elicit feelings of arousal than it is to find high-arousal negative stimuli.
