Why We Romanticize The Past

Wait. Are you saying my memories aren’t true?

Not exactly. But there’s a common misconception that memories are accurate records of the past, pristinely preserved in a mental filing cabinet.

Memory doesn’t really work like that,” said Anne Wilson, a professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University whose research broadly focuses on memory, time and identity. “We reconstruct what happened in the past on the basis of little bits and pieces of memory. We’re acting like archaeologists — picking up the pieces and putting them back together.”

This doesn’t mean we consciously distort or embellish our memories. But the process of retrieving memories is “highly reconstructive and prone to various biases,” said Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of “The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers.”

For instance, researchers have observed that memories associated with negative emotions fade more quickly than those associated with positive emotions. This phenomenon is known as fading affect bias.

“It’s a coping mechanism,” said Felipe de Brigard, a professor of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, who studies the intersection of memory and imagination. “You have to carry your past with you. If a memory hurt every time that you recalled it as much as when you experienced it, that would be unbearable.”

A 2019 study found a correlation between fading affect bias and perseverance, suggesting that diminished negativity allows people “to put positive and negative events into the proper emotional perspective.”

Then there’s the simple fact that most of us prefer reminiscing about positive experiences, which gives us “preferential access” to those memories, Dr. Schacter explained. In other words, aspects of the past that we enjoy thinking about tend to stick with us over time, while elements we don’t think about fade away. Researchers call this retrieval-induced forgetting. “This may contribute to a positive memory bias because we tend not to rehearse, rehash and retrieve negative experiences,” Dr. Schacter added. Traumatic memories, which are often intrusive and persistent, are the notable exception.