Study: Anxiety Can Help People Remember Event Details
Author: University of Waterloo
Published: 2018/02/28 - Updated: 2026/02/19
Publication Type: Research, Study, Analysis
Category Topic: Cognitive - Related Publications
Contents: Synopsis - Introduction - Main - Insights, Updates
Synopsis: This research, published in the Journal Brain Sciences, presents findings from the University of Waterloo showing that moderate levels of anxiety can actually help people recall details of events more accurately. The study of 80 undergraduate students also revealed a significant downside - when anxiety crosses a threshold into high levels or fear, it can distort memories by tainting neutral information with negative emotional associations. These findings are particularly relevant to people living with anxiety disorders and other cognitive or mental health disabilities, as well as educators and caregivers working with these populations, because they offer practical insight into how emotional states shape what we remember and how accurately we remember it - Disabled World (DW).
- Topic Definition: Anxiety
Anxiety is a natural emotional and physiological response characterized by feelings of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically triggered by situations perceived as threatening or uncertain. While commonly associated with negative outcomes, anxiety exists on a spectrum - at lower, manageable levels it can heighten attention and sharpen cognitive processes such as memory encoding, but at excessive levels it becomes a clinical concern linked to disorders including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Research in cognitive psychology continues to reveal that the relationship between anxiety and mental performance is not a simple one, with moderate arousal often improving focus and recall while chronic or intense anxiety can impair daily functioning, distort perception, and degrade the accuracy of memory.
Introduction
Anxiety Can Aid People to Recall Details of Events
Anxiety can help people to remember things, a study from the University of Waterloo has found. The study of 80 undergraduate students found that manageable levels of anxiety actually aided people in being able to recall the details of events. It also found that when anxiety levels got too high or descended into fear, it could lead to the colouring of memories where people begin to associate otherwise neutral elements of an experience to the negative context.
"People with high anxiety have to be careful," said co-author Myra Fernandes, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.
"To some degree, there is an optimal level of anxiety that is going to benefit your memory, but we know from other research that high levels of anxiety can cause people to reach a tipping point, which impacts their memories and performance."
Main Content
The study saw 80 undergraduate students from the University of Waterloo (64 females) complete the experiment.
Half of the participants were randomly assigned to a deep encoding instruction group while the other half were randomly assigned to a shallow encoding group.
All participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales.
It was discovered that individuals high in anxiety showed a heightened sensitivity to the influences of emotional context on their memory, with neutral information becoming tainted, or coloured by the emotion with which it was associated during encoding
"By thinking about emotional events or by thinking about negative events this might put you in a negative mindset that can bias you or change the way you perceive your current environment," said Christopher Lee, a psychology Ph. D. candidate at Waterloo.
"So, I think for the general public it is important to be aware of what biases you might bring to the table or what particular mindset you might be viewing the world in and how that might ultimately shape what we walk away seeing."
Fernandes also said that for educators, it is important to be mindful that there could be individual factors that influence the retention of the material they are teaching and that lightening the mood when teaching could be beneficial.
The study, which was undertaken by Fernandes and Lee, was recently published in in the Journal Brain Sciences.
Insights, Analysis, and Developments
Editorial Note: What makes this University of Waterloo study especially worth paying attention to is its dual finding - anxiety is not simply a hindrance to cognitive function, but at manageable levels can sharpen memory recall, while at elevated levels it warps how we encode and retrieve otherwise neutral information. For the millions of people who live with anxiety disorders, this nuance matters greatly, as it reframes the conversation away from anxiety as purely destructive and toward a more realistic understanding of how the brain processes emotional experience. Educators, mental health professionals, and individuals managing anxiety alike stand to benefit from recognizing where that tipping point lies between helpful alertness and harmful memory distortion - Disabled World (DW).Attribution/Source(s): This quality-reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by University of Waterloo and published on 2018/02/28, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.