Life events are often divided by the individual into negative and positive ones. Such a division is a separate issue for discussion, but what is of high value to any inquisitive person is how this process can affect one’s perception and memory. An article by Adam Congleton and Dorthe Berntsen, The devil is in the details, fully answers these questions through experiments and verified statistics. This summary aims to provide a brief retrospective of the process and results of the work done by the researchers mentioned above.
First of all, it is worth paying attention to the etymology of the authors concerning the research carried out. Applying third-party research results, they determine in advance that the negativity or positivity of a particular event and the degree of one’s involvement in it directly determines the likelihood of imprinting on one’s memories and subsequent perception of the world around them. For example, a sudden win in the lottery will be remembered by a person much more substantial than being late for school, where the factor of unexpectedness is essential. On the other hand, based on the data presented, many people tend to forget traumatic or tragic experiences over the years and sometimes months later. Moreover, factors such as age also play an essential role, making it impossible to determine the exact relationship between positive and negative and unexpected or anticipated connotations in theoretical research. Thus, it would be logical to conclude that the Congleton and Berntsen experiment is an integral part of the study.
After defining the preliminary conclusions and the reason for the necessity of the experiment, it is necessary to outline the methodology used in the research. In this study, the authors apply a concept called Simulated Event. The essence is that the subjects are shown first-person film clips, and they are asked in advance to try to associate themselves with the protagonist as much as possible. In conducting such experiments with people of different age groups and interviewing them briefly at the end, the goal is to track the number of remembered details. The nature of the videos varies from traumatic to highly pleasant, so it will be possible to compare the factors most strongly influencing human perception based on the reactions given out. Furthermore, to collect statistics, the test subjects were divided into two groups in advance – one was shown positive clips, and the other, on the contrary, was shown negative ones. The researchers obtained the most accurate and categorized results by applying such a format.
Regarding the results obtained by Congleton and Berntsen, many factors were questioned. This conclusion was that the only statistically determinable factor was the degree of the suddenness of what the subjects observed in the film clips. Factors such as the negativity or positivity of the event and the age group had no significant influence on the result. At the same time, the authors point out that this inaccuracy could have been that people were not involved in real situations, only watching what was happening on the screen. They stated that more resources and additional theoretical research in psychology are needed to further study this phenomenon.
In conclusion, the journal article does not answer the question it initially highlighted. However, it did touch on the importance of such research and its potential value for the foreseeable future. If researchers succeed in determining the causal relationship between a person’s perception of certain events and their ability to remember small details, this would greatly impact various humanities fields.