Sad people have more accurate memories.
Being unhappy brings with it a slew of adverse effects on cognition, including a diminished ability to engage in abstract critical thinking — but evidently facial recognition is exempt from this effect. A study in Consciousness and Cognition encouraged happy or sad moods in student volunteers (by asking them to concentrate on either happy or sad memories, while playing The A-Team theme and Mozart’s “Requiem,” respectively) and found that the saddest participants had the most accurate facial recognition; the happiest participants were the least accurate.
-
tonyuribe posted this
