Why does the brain mostly remember tragic, bad or embarassing memories instead of the happy ones
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Huh? This isn’t true at all
There’s some theories that this is an evolutionary trait. You know what happened to the guy who forgot that wolves ate his buddy? He got eaten by wolves. Humans have a negativity bias in order to stay alive
It’s called the negative bias. Our brains seek out and remember particularly strong emotions. Mostly the negative ones – disgust, terror, shame, and so on. They register so strongly because in evolutionary terms, that kept you alive. One, in triggering the fight-flight-freeze reflex in the survival situation. And two, in ensuring you would stay away from whatever caused that – someone attacked you from a neighbouring tribe, a predator, you ate something poisonous, you did something horrible and it threatened your standing within the tribe.
The ratio in research is about 3:1* in terms of how much it weighs on you. In other words, for a parent, it’s a good rule of thumb to have three positive experiences with your kid for every 1 negative one. As a teacher or a coach, you have to create three positive experiences for your player or student before you’ve earned a criticism. The flip-side is that too many positives and you get toxic positivity, somewhere around 11:1, like it’s too much positivity and it doesn’t feel authentic anymore.
**As a note, the exact numbers have been debunked (the ones given by the original researchers), so use the ratios with a LOT of leeway depending on the person and the situation. I use this for ELI5 purposes.*
I agree with what people are talking about.
But there’s also a question of which memories you access at a particular moment.
If you’re in a stressful or negative moment, you may find negative memories easier to recall, or even recalled without you wanting to.
If you’re running from a lion, remembering that time you laid in the daisies all afternoon is not going to help you. Remembering that time you successfully evaded a lion might. Negative memory fixation is a stress response. And since our stresses today tend to be more abstract and less immediately solvable, that stress response triggering negative memories can misfire and linger. Especially if you’re dealing with something like chronic depression or axiety.
OMG. This explains so much!! I thought I was just messed in the head … Well, maybe I am, but at least I have a new point of view to consider! 😁
You remember stuff that sticks out. So if you had mostly a good life, you could remember all those bad moments vividly because they were out of the norm. If you had a constantly bad life, you could remember all the good, albeit few, moments.
Example about stuff sticking out: if you were driving to work and saw a car flip and crash, that would stick I’m your mond because it’s so out of the ordinary.
People also remember (or think they remember) important events, like 9/11 or the announcement that Osama had been killed.
I would lean towards it being an effect of evolution. We are okay with happy situations. Maybe in negative situations our brain remembers them because we have things to learn from them. “You can take the brain out of a monkey, but you can’t take the monkey out of the brain”
Your brain is trying to help you learn the most important things in the world: what can hurt you.
Less ELI5, but holding up well after after a couple of millennia:
All those who learn must suffer
And even in our sleep
Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until
In our despair, against our will
Comes wisdom from the awful grace of god
-Aeschylus
In moments like this I think to the times I don’t immediately recall and take comfort that in those times, I was happy.
What use are good memories in a survival situation?
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