Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity Psychology Faculty Research Psychology Department 2004 Memory for Emotional and Nonemotional Events in Depression: A Question of Habit? Paula T. Hertel Trinity University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/psych_faculty Part of the Psychology Commons Publication Details Memory and Emotion Repository Citation Hertel, P. T. (2004). Memory for emotional and nonemotional events in depression: A question of habit? In D. Reisberg & P. Hertel (Eds.), Memory and emotion (pp. 186-216). Oxford University Press. This Contribution to Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Psychology Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Psychology Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. MEMORY FOR EMOTIONAL AND NONEMOTIONAL EVENTS IN DEPRESSION A Question of Habit? PAULA HERTEL he truest claim that cognitive science can make might also be the Tleast sophisticated: the mind tends to do what it has done before. In previous centuries philosophers and psychologists invented constructs such as associations, habit strength, and connectivity to formalize the truism, but others have known about it, too. In small towns in the Ozarks, for example, grandmothers have been overheard doling out warnings such as, "Don't think those ugly thoughts; your mind will freeze that way." Depressed persons, like most of us, usually don't heed this advice. The thoughts frozen in their minds might not be "ugly," but they often reflect disappointments, losses, failures, other unhappy events, and a generally negative interpretive stance toward ongoing experience.