Reliving emotional memories: Episodic memory retrieval elicits affective psychophysiological responses

Abstract

Memories of emotional events can guide behavior in the present. One way to fulfill this adaptive function might be through psychophysiological responses that signal desirable and undesirable outcomes. However, it remains unknown whether remembering emotional episodes indeed re-elicits corresponding affective psychophysiological responses. We addressed this question in two experiments (N1 = 48, N2 = 59). Young adults watched positive, negative, and neutral movie clips and recalled these episodes one day later. To index the psychophysiological expression of positive and negative affect, we measured smiling (zygomaticus major) and frowning (corrugator supercilii), respectively. Participants smiled more when remembering positive compared to neutral and negative episodes. Moreover, they frowned more when remembering negative compared to positive but not neutral episodes. We also explored whether the magnitude of expressed affect during remembering was proportional to the expressed affect during the corresponding original experience, but results were mixed. Our findings underscore that recalling emotional episodes can evoke affective psychophysiological responses. However, whether the exact magnitude of expressed affect during retrieval maps onto the original experience remains an open question. Future studies into emotional episodic memories would benefit from incorporating affective psychophysiological indices because they may represent essential motivational components that inform future behavior.