Adults Who Experienced More Positive Emotions Had Less Memory Decline Over The Next Decade

A huge variety of factors are related to memory, from mood to personality to what substances have been consumed. One recent study, for example, found that older adults with higher openness to experience also experienced fewer cognitive complaints each day; other work has found a relationship between self-reported memory and traits including neuroticism and extraversion.

Now a new study has looked at the relationship between memory and positive affect — the experience of pleasant emotional states like enthusiasm, pride or joy. The team finds that there was less of a decline in memory over a period of nine years for participants who started out with higher levels of positive affect. Continue reading →