The Impact of Emotional Narratives on the Phenomena of False Memory

Description

We studied whether emotional stories make people more likely to have "false memories" - remembering things that never happened. This matters for eyewitness testimony and legal cases. We had 70 students read emotional or neutral stories in Bangla, then tested their memory. Surprisingly, people who read emotional stories (both positive and negative) had fewer false memories and better accurate recall than those reading neutral stories. This contradicts previous research using word lists. Our findings suggest that when emotional information appears in meaningful story contexts - like real life - it actually protects memory accuracy rather than distorting it.

Institutions

• University of Dhaka Faculty of Biological Sciences

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