The impact of negative and positive emotions on long-term and working memory

Abstract

Emotions are a constant companion in people’s life, and most of the emotions have been characterized into either positive or negative emotions. While people are experiencing different types of emotions, their memory system and brain mechanisms will be impacted differently. As memory is a brain function that people need in daily life, it is paramount to investigate and understand the mechanism of the influence that emotions have on human brain. This paper analyzed 8 experiments on the difference between positive and negative emotions influence on memory system (4 for positive emotions and 4 for negative emotions). On the one hand, positive emotions have been shown to improve working memory, which can increase learning efficiency, but their effect on short-term memory is still unclear. On the other hand, negative emotions can impair working memory and disrupt short-term memory for positive or neutral information, while improving memory retention for negative events.