How (and Why) Emotion Enhances the Subjective Sense of Recollection
Open accessAbstract
A growing body of evidence suggests emotion boosts memory accuracy to an extent but affects the subjective sense of recollection even more. The result is vivid memories for emotional events that are held with confidence but that may be surprisingly inaccurate in their details. We examine the neural circuitry underlying emotion's impact on memory and the subjective sense of recollection to provide insight into this puzzling phenomenon. This research suggests that for emotional stimuli the quality and strength of memory for a few details may mediate judgments of recollection, whereas for neutral stimuli the quantity of contextual details may be more important. Finally, we speculate that the enhanced subjective sense of recollection with emotion, in the absence of absolute veridicality, may have evolved to enable fast and unambiguous decision making in emotional situations.
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Objective memory accuracy and subjective memory confidence can dissociate.
“Numerous behavioral cognitive studies have observed dissociations between memory accuracy and memory confidence [89–95].”
From First-person view of one’s body in immersive virtual reality: Influence on episodic memory (2019) · cites this paper as [92]
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- Authors
- Phelps, E. A., & Sharot, T.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Phelps, Elizabeth A.
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2008-04
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 147-152
- ISSN
- 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8721
- PMC
- PMC3051358
- OpenAlex
- W2068276368
- Cited by
- 236
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 5.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Current Directions in Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH062104)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Keywords
- emotion and memory, memory confidence, memory vividness, memory accuracy, emotional decision-making, evolution of memory
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