Remembering Election Night 2016: Subjective but not objective metrics of autobiographical memory vary with political affiliation, affective valence, and surprise.

Abstract

Flashbulb memories represent a unique phenomenon linking research on cognition with research on emotion, yet most studies on this phenomenon have characterized collective events that are negative and unexpected in nature. In contrast, the 2016 American election of Donald Trump was a public, culturally-shared event, eliciting extreme emotional responses that were positive for some individuals but negative for others, as well as varying levels of surprise. We longitudinally evaluated autobiographical memories for Election Night 2016 in a large online sample of Clinton supporters, Trump supporters, and third-party/non-voters over a 12-month period, in terms of both objective memory metrics (information quantity and memory consistency) and subjective memory metrics (including memory confidence, metacognition, and sensory experience). Emotional responses to the election outcome varied widely, with Clinton supporters reporting highly negative responses, Trump supporters reporting highly positive responses, and third-party/non-voters reporting mildly negative responses. Emotional intensity was enhanced in surprised versus non-surprised individuals. Relative to third-party/non-voters, Clinton and Trump supporters reported greater memory vividness, event importance, and sensory experience. Additionally, limited valence effects on subjective memory were observed (including higher memory confidence in Trump supporters and higher memory rehearsal in Clinton supporters). These differences in subjective experience were observed despite similar levels of information quantity and consistency as a function of valence. This characterization of memories for surprising positive events suggests they share many of the paradoxical qualities of memories for negative events often discussed as "flashbulb memories", but also points to potential differences in memory phenomenology for personal versus collectively-experienced events.

Long-term, multi-event surprise enhances autobiographical memory

“…Therefore, subjects tended to report plays with exceptionally good or bad win probability swings for their preferred teams. In sum, the influence of unsigned and signed surprises on memory for plays replicates prior findings on the influence of momentary surprise on memory 7, 40 and extends them into real-world domains 64, 65 .…”

“…However, reported memories also had disproportionately high unsigned surprises, suggesting that reported memories were not simply due to fan preference. Individually surprising moments (in this case, for individual plays) were well-remembered, which replicates prior results on momentary surprise 1–3,7,11,94 and extends them into real-world domains 64, 65 . The latter aspect is important, because extending ideas from laboratory-based experiments in reinforcement learning (which consist of numerous repetitions of nearly identical trials) into real-world contexts (in which situations may not be precisely repeated) has been a central challenge 95 .…”

“…Antony et al 7 asked basketball fans to freely recall basketball game clips and found that surprise also drove memory for individual plays when subjects were encouraged to respond with everything they could remember. Therefore, this concern has been partially addressed for momentary surprise in laboratory settings, but future studies could examine whether surprise plays a role by probing a broader swath of memories 64, 65 . Another promising future direction follows laboratory findings that salient events (such as surprise) boost surrounding memories in some paradigms 24, 142,143 , whereas in others they impair them 144 or have no effect 3, 94 (see 145 for a short review).…”

“…For this, we asked basketball fans about their most positive and negative memories of entire basketball games and seasons. To link these results with the literature on momentary surprise, we also asked fans about individual plays, allowing us to replicate findings in this literature and extend them to real-world, autobiographical memories [see also 64,65 ]. We chose the sports domain for three main reasons.…”

Time-dependent emotional memory transformation: Divergent pathways of item memory and contextual dependency.

“…Therefore, it is important to consider how the present findings relate to real-life memories that have been acquired outside the laboratory. Previous research on autobiographical memories has aimed to characterize the time-dependent development of memory for emotional events, ranging from disturbing terrorist attacks (Hirst et al, 2009; Talarico & Rubin, 2003), to threatening or satisfying electoral results, (Chiew et al, 2022; Raw et al, 2021), to disappointing or uplifting sports achievements (Kensinger & Schacter, 2006). In line with our item memory results (i.e., increasingly stronger retention for emotional memories) some studies suggest that events that are emotional (e.g., New York Yankees fans witnessing a surprising comeback by the Boston Red Sox in the final game of the American League playoff series) are remembered more durably (Kensinger & Schacter, 2006) than neutral events (e.g., baseball fans of neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox watching the same game).…”