ABSTRACT
Humans can experience and remember a wide range of emotion, and memories that are associated with strong emotions often feel like they are remembered better. The memories we cherish, like a wedding, or birth of a child, are the memories we tend to enjoy remembering throughout our lives. Conversely, highly stressful or traumatic experiences are those that we may wish we could forget but feel as though we cannot. This chapter covers the research on memory and emotion, including valence of emotional memories (positive emotions and negative emotions), memory for shocking and impactful life events such as the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (called flashbulb memories), and how trauma—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other stressors—affect memory.
