Fascinating new studies reveal which memories will interest us, and why.
Typically it’s our big milestones that we document most
diligently—weddings, births, graduations, professional achievements.
These are the events we expect we’ll most want to revisit down the road.
But new research suggests that revisiting ordinary, everyday experiences can bring us a lot more pleasure than we realize.
Researchers (link is external) at Harvard Business School recently conducted four studies (link is external) to examine what happens when people "rediscover" ordinary experiences from the past, and their findings are intriguing.
In the first study, undergraduate participants created time capsules that included the following items:
Results showed that participants tended to underestimate the positive feelings they would have upon viewing the items in the time capsule. That is, revisiting these seemingly mundane memories turned out to be more enjoyable than participants expected.
The next two studies compared ordinary and extraordinary experiences and found that participants underestimated the benefits of revisiting ordinary experiences but not extraordinary ones. Revisiting ordinary experiences months later turned out to be just as enjoyable as revisiting extraordinary ones, contrary to participants’ expectations. In addition, ordinary experiences came to be seen as more extraordinary over time, whereas extraordinary experienced did not.
The final study showed that most participants preferred to watch an
entertaining video than to record an ordinary experience, but, one month
later most participants expressed the opposite preference:
They wanted to read about their ordinary past experience rather than
watch an entertaining video. This discrepancy was explained in part by
participants’ overconfidence in their ability to remember
ordinary experiences—it seemed as though the process of forgetting the
memory added to the freshness and surprise of rediscovering it.
These findings are consistent with research showing that we are generally not great at anticipating our emotional reactions to future events, a process called affective forecasting (link is external). Our failure to anticipate the pleasure of rediscovering past experiences may lead us to miss opportunities to document moments that will become more meaningful later on.
The researchers suggest a simple intervention to compensate for this bias: Take a few minutes every once in awhile to document what’s going on in your life, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant. This documentation could be in the form of words, pictures, video clips, or ticket stubs and other objects. You could keep a journal, make a scrapbook, or keep a box under your bed. Make a point of coming back and revisiting these mementos later in time.
If this sounds like a recipe for hoarding, keep in mind that the goal is not to document everything, but to capture slivers of life that can later bring you back to specific places and times. If you save every little memento, it will likely become overwhelming and hard to sift through. That said, there may be some value in a small degree of clutter—certain kinds of messes (e.g., a box of old photos yet to be organized into an album) can be a lot of fun to discover years later.
And what about the constant documentation that occurs on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media? Do these records give us more opportunities for pleasant strolls down memory lane? Not necessarily. Over-documentation has been shown to hinder encoding of memories (link is external), and the kind of documenting we do on social media tends to be geared toward presenting a certain image of ourselves to others (link is external)rather than exposing the more raw and authentic parts of our experience—and the latter are likely to be more interesting later on.
As the researchers put it, "by recording ordinary moments today, one can make the present a 'present' for the future." And it's not just a present for your future self. Your family members and close friends are likely to appreciate someday rediscovering these memories, too.
But new research suggests that revisiting ordinary, everyday experiences can bring us a lot more pleasure than we realize.
Researchers (link is external) at Harvard Business School recently conducted four studies (link is external) to examine what happens when people "rediscover" ordinary experiences from the past, and their findings are intriguing.
In the first study, undergraduate participants created time capsules that included the following items:
- A description of the last social event they attended
- A description of a recent conversation
- A description of how they met their roommate for the following semester
- A list of three songs they recently listened to
- An inside joke
- A recent photo
- A recent status they had posted on their Facebook profile
- An excerpt from a final paper for class
- A question from a recent final exam
Results showed that participants tended to underestimate the positive feelings they would have upon viewing the items in the time capsule. That is, revisiting these seemingly mundane memories turned out to be more enjoyable than participants expected.
The next two studies compared ordinary and extraordinary experiences and found that participants underestimated the benefits of revisiting ordinary experiences but not extraordinary ones. Revisiting ordinary experiences months later turned out to be just as enjoyable as revisiting extraordinary ones, contrary to participants’ expectations. In addition, ordinary experiences came to be seen as more extraordinary over time, whereas extraordinary experienced did not.
Source: Andy Warhol, Time Capsules/The Andy Warhol Museum
These findings are consistent with research showing that we are generally not great at anticipating our emotional reactions to future events, a process called affective forecasting (link is external). Our failure to anticipate the pleasure of rediscovering past experiences may lead us to miss opportunities to document moments that will become more meaningful later on.
The researchers suggest a simple intervention to compensate for this bias: Take a few minutes every once in awhile to document what’s going on in your life, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant. This documentation could be in the form of words, pictures, video clips, or ticket stubs and other objects. You could keep a journal, make a scrapbook, or keep a box under your bed. Make a point of coming back and revisiting these mementos later in time.
If this sounds like a recipe for hoarding, keep in mind that the goal is not to document everything, but to capture slivers of life that can later bring you back to specific places and times. If you save every little memento, it will likely become overwhelming and hard to sift through. That said, there may be some value in a small degree of clutter—certain kinds of messes (e.g., a box of old photos yet to be organized into an album) can be a lot of fun to discover years later.
And what about the constant documentation that occurs on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media? Do these records give us more opportunities for pleasant strolls down memory lane? Not necessarily. Over-documentation has been shown to hinder encoding of memories (link is external), and the kind of documenting we do on social media tends to be geared toward presenting a certain image of ourselves to others (link is external)rather than exposing the more raw and authentic parts of our experience—and the latter are likely to be more interesting later on.
As the researchers put it, "by recording ordinary moments today, one can make the present a 'present' for the future." And it's not just a present for your future self. Your family members and close friends are likely to appreciate someday rediscovering these memories, too.
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