We all know that thinking about happy memories can make you
happy, while thinking about sad events from the past can make you sad. This relationship is so well-established that
it is often used as a manipulation of people’s mood in experiments.
Presumably, this happens, because thinking about a positive
event brings you mentally closer to that happy time in your past, and being
close to something happy makes you happy.
Likewise, thinking about negative events brings you mentally closer to
sad events.
An interesting paper in the January, 2013 issue of Psychological Science by William Hart
examined this question of mental closeness using language.
The complex grammar of language allows us to take all kinds
of vantage points on events. We are all
familiar with basic components of grammar like tense. We can talk about events that happened in the
past as well as events that will happen in the future.
Another (and less obvious) element of grammar is aspect.
Aspect allows us to describe an action as if it is extended in time or
as an action that has a clear endpoint.
The imperfective aspect describes events that extend over time (I was
shopping for a shirt). The perfective aspect
marks that the event has ended (I shopped for a shirt).
Hart suggests that when people talk about an event as if it
is extended in time (using the imperfective aspect), then they will feel
mentally nearer to that event than if they describe it as completed (using the
perfective aspect). That mental nearness
can influence mood. So, when thinking
about a positive past event, people should be happier when they describe it using
the imperfective aspect (which brings them mentally closer to it) than when
using the perfective aspect. When
thinking about a negative past event, people should be sadder when they
describe it using the imperfective aspect (which brings them mentally nearer to
it) than when using the perfective aspect.
In one study, people were asked to describe a past event
that was either negative or neutral (neither positive or negative). They were cued to talk about the event either
in the imperfective aspect (What was happening?) or in the perfective aspect
(What happened?). After describing the event, people also rated their
mood.
People who described a neutral event were not affected by
the aspect they used to describe the event, meaning that particular grammatical
forms do not influence mood on their own.
However, those who described a negative event were sadder when they used
the imperfective aspect than when they used the perfective aspect. That is, when the language made people feel
close to the event, they were sadder than when it made them feel further away.
In a second study, people did either an easy or frustrating
task. The easy task involved solving
simple anagrams (unscramble the letters LGRAE into LARGE). The difficult task involved some difficult
anagrams and some that were actually impossible.
After doing this task, people were asked to describe
it. As before, they were prompted to use
either the imperfective or perfective aspect when describing what they did. Finally, people rated how happy they were
feeling.
Those who did the easy task felt positively about it. When
they described the task using the imperfective aspect (which made them feel
close to the event), they rated themselves as happier than when they described
it using the perfective aspect. Those
who did the hard task felt negatively about it.
When they described the task, using the imperfective aspect, they rated
themselves as sadder than when they described it using the perfective aspect.
This research is fascinating, because it demonstrates how
the language we use affects our sense of closeness to the past. Simply by describing events as extended in
time we can bring ourselves closer to the past.
This effect happens, even though most of us are not explicitly aware of
these elements of our grammar.
