Speer and Delgado report that thinking about happy memories enhances wellbeing when people are stressed. Their study “explored whether recalling autobiographical memories that have a positive content – that is, remembering the good times – can dampen the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis stress response.”
Study participants were stressed psychologically by the researchers and the scientists then determined that “recalling positive, but not neutral, memories resulted in a dampened cortisol rise and reduced negative affect [mood]…These findings highlight the restorative and protective function of self-generated positive emotions via memory recall in the face of stress.”
The design of workplaces and other sorts of spaces can make it easier or more difficult for people to display objects, for example, that can bring positive memories to mind, such as photos taken during vacations. If hardcopies of the images are visible, users can look at them regardless of what’s on their computer screen – the task at hand may prevent users from looking at images on their computers that bring positive memories to mind.
Megan Speer and Mauricio Delgado. “Reminiscing About Positive Memories Buffers Acute Stress Responses.” Nature, in press.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.