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Ricerche di Psicologia/Psychological Research Journal - Open Access

Articoli

No. 4 (2023)

Comparing joy and sadness: A study on emotional autobiographical memory

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rip2023oa18311
Submitted
agosto 8, 2024
Published
2024-08-09

Abstract

Joy and sadness occur fairly frequently in the lives of ordinary people.
The present study investigates the similarities and differences between joyful and sad autobiographical memories. We recruited two groups of adult participants matched for age, gender, and education: subjects belonging to the first group (N = 95) were asked to write out a brief narrative of a joyful personal event; subjects belonging to the second group (N = 90) were asked to write out a brief narrative of a sad personal event. All the participants also completed questionnaires assessing the memory characteristics of recalled events, event centrality, and social sharing of emotion. Results showed that narratives of sad events were significantly lengthier than narratives of joyful events. However, autobiographical memories of joyful and sad events were substantially similar with respect to a number of variables, including narrative coherence, phenomenological characteristics (e.g., vividness, quality, emotional intensity), and rate of emotional social sharing. Taken together, results suggest that, although joy and sadness are hedonically opposite emotions, they have a very similar impact on autobiographical memory.

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