Reappraising a Parent can Occur with Non-Suggestive Questions: Changing Emotions and Memories of Emotion

Whether is it possible to reappraise parents in non-suggestive questions, and whether this has an impact on emotions and memories is of interest in psychotherapy and legal cases. Past research has shown reappraisals of past situations is associated with changes in memories of emotions. In Patihis et al (2019) we showed memories of love could be affected by reappraisals, but did not analyze that dataset on other memories of emotion. The current paper analyzes that experimental dataset for the effect of reappraisals towards participants mothers on the emotions: happiness, interest, sadness, and anger (and on memories of those emotions in childhood). Results show that emotions were significantly changed by reappraisals, and this difference was sustained four weeks later. We found memories of emotion were affected, especially memory of happiness in childhood, but to a lesser degree compared to current emotions. This offer some confirmation of the cognitive appraisal view of memories of emotions. A follow up experiment with pretest measures showed some similar patterns, but with muted effects. Therapists and clients should be aware that non-suggestive prompts might lead to reappraisals of parents, with knock on affects on emotions and memories. Whether this should be part of informed consent in therapy is open to debate.