Smile Snaps Make Happy Memories

"Humans like their glasses half full. They like personal photographs to show happy faces. Pictures make it easier to remember an experience as having been a good one, even if it was far from wonderful at the time. Our psychological makeup contributes to this memory magic. First, left to our own devices, we tend to see things through rose-colored glasses. Second, the relatively high proportion of smiling faces in pictures means that recall is nudged even further in a positive direction.

"Abundant psychological studies show that we prefer to look on the bright side of life. In one particular study, a large and varied sample of people was instructed to keep a diary for several months with the stipulation that they record one event each day and that that one event be unique, not routine like having breakfast or driving to work. Participants were also asked to rate each event for how pleasant or unpleasant it was when it happened.

"There was clear evidence of a positive bias. Across thousands of events, pleasant ones far outnumbered unpleasant ones. More interesting is what happened next. In a follow-up some three and a half months later, participants again rated the same events. When the original ratings of the unpleasant events were compared with the ratings of the same events later, the second ratings moved toward the brighter side. The events seen as unpleasant when they first happened became on second thought months later significantly less unpleasant. What had once seemed disagreeable was recalled as not so bad after all. The ratings of pleasant events did not change over time. What started out as pleasant stayed that way.

"The fact that most of the photographs we keep of family and friends show lots of smiling does not necessarily reflect the actual amount of smiling that occurred at the time. But the pictures encourage the idea that a happy time was had by all. If the family get-togethers were actually not all that happy, at least we have a few photographs to holster the illusion that on balance those visits were really not so bad.

"Not everyone complies with a smile when pictures are being taken. For the picture taker, some cajoling or trickery is required to get everyone to smile so that a 'good' picture can be taken. We want the moment to look 'natural' even though we may have had to fabricate it.

"Except that sometimes it doesn't work. The film Ordinary People (1980) shows a family trying to come to terms with the death of a favored son and esteemed older brother. The father, the surviving son, and especially the mother, are having trouble holding it together — cracks start to appear. In one scene, it is Christmas Day. The mother, father, and son, along with visiting grandparents, are straining for normalcy. And what more normal than the annual photo of happy relatives gathered round the Christmas tree? In the usual pre-photo confusion of where people are to stand, the mother in the film, played by Mary Tyler Moore, reflexively moves away from her surviving son and thereby graphically signals her unwillingness to be in any picture beside him, let alone a happy one."