Studies also show that negative memories light up areas of the brain related to emotional processing and fear, and that retrieving negative memories tends to influence our current mood and emotions more than positive memories.
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Researchers have also found that people with excellent memory skills tend to have both a strong working memory (retaining information immediately after learning it) and long-term memory (recalling information more than a day after memorising it).
But memory is a tricky beast, and its link to happiness is ultimately tied to factors such as individual personality traits, mental health conditions, cognitive processing styles and even epigenetics, Marshall says.
“Like with anything, there is a bell curve for memory … and those towards the upper end of that bell curve do have a correlation towards higher rates of anxiety, depression, etc,” he says, explaining that people who skew to the extreme end have to work harder to filter memories because even if they happened 10 years ago, “can be remembered as though they are happening now, which can be disturbing if negative.”
But, crucially, Marshall warns against automatically assigning causation to the equation.
“Just because the capacity to remember more events is higher, does not doom one to unhappiness,” he tells me. “As humans, we are as much what we choose to inhibit as what we choose to action, and this includes the filters we apply to our memories either consciously or unconsciously.”
Despite how they can make me feel, and what I know, I don’t ever find myself wishing I had a bad, or at least worse, memory. As I get older, I am becoming better at contextualising the memories of my younger self and learning to forgive myself for the things I did and said.
And, as my daughter grows, knowing that I will be able to remember everyday moments with clarity gives me something to look forward to. Because when she asks about taking her first steps, or what her first day of school was like, I’ll be able to tell her everything in picture-perfect detail.
Caroline Zielinski is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.
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