The results were intriguing. The researchers found that after only a 10-minute delay, the volunteers could remember all types of scenarios equally well. One day later, however, the details of negative simulations were much more difficult to recall than the details of positive or neutral simulations.

To ensure that the original memories were not influencing the participants’ recall of the future scenarios, the experimenters had a different set of volunteers generate lists of familiar people, places and objects without calling up memories—for instance, using Facebook to find the names of 110 familiar people. Then they did the same imagery and memory tasks as the first group. The results of this second experiment were the same as those of the first.

Happy Endings
These findings are consistent with what is known about negative memories for actual past events, which also tend to fade more rapidly than positive ones. Szpu­nar and his colleagues hypothesize that the emotion associated with a future simulation is the glue that binds together the details of the scenario in memory. As the negative emotion dissipates, so, too, does the integrity of the remembered future.

So the negative versions of the future fade away with time, and the positive versions endure—leaving, on balance, an overly rosy vision of what’s to come. But that may not be a bad thing. People who suffer from depression and other mood disorders tend to not only ruminate on negative events from the past but also spin out gloomy scenarios for the future. Psychologically healthy adults tend to be unduly optimistic about what lies ahead. It’s probably adaptive to occasionally imagine the worst so we can do our best to avoid the things we can avoid—but then let those invited troubles fade away.

This article was published in print as "Memories of Tomorrow."

3 Comments

1. 1. RossiSpeaks 09:33 AM 5/12/12

   Wonderful article, thank you for giving me ammunition for enforcing my beliefs. For years I've been teaching what I call, "5 Sense Surround Goal Statements". It's exactly what they are speaking to in 'Reflecting Tomorrow', and 'Remembering Futures'.
   
   When goals are written in present tense at a future date as thought they have already been accomplished like magic they happen. However, I have found that they MUST be stated positively as negative causes the mind to doubt it's reality.
   
   Rossi

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2. 2. momoo 12:09 PM 5/12/12

   Yep.I always have dreams of my future, even though my past. And it's very nice, i have a peaceful life!

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3. 3. octium8 02:22 PM 5/13/12

   Hey Herbert
   
   Thank you so much for a great article! Very inspiring and well thought out.
   Is it possible to get some of the references you used for this article? I am mostly interested on references related to this part of the text: "Recent research has shown that the same brain areas are active when we remember past events and when we think about the future."
   
   
   Thank you kindly
   
   Eugen Popa

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