People experience disgust during and following traumatic events. Like fear reactions—the focus of most trauma research—disgust reactions are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Interestingly, disgust reactions might linger longer (i.e., persist more) in memory than fear reactions, facilitating PTSD development. Yet, this idea has not been explored experimentally. Here, participants rated their emotional reactions to a trauma analogue—that elicited both disgust and fear—at encoding and at 1-week delay. People’s feelings of disgust (i.e., upon remembering the trauma analogue) persisted more than their feelings of fear over 1 week, highlighting disgust as a trauma-relevant emotion.

People recall more disgust than fear stimuli, but does disgust’s ‘stickiness’ in memory result in more false memories? Existing research finds low false memory rates for disgust and fear, but image lures depict content unrelated to target images. We presented 111 participants with disgust and fear images during an attention-monitoring task. In a recognition test 24-48 hours later, participants viewed ‘old’ images and ‘new’ (related, unrelated) image lures. Relative to fear, participants’ attention, correct recognition, and memory sensitivity—but not false memories—were enhanced for disgust. Our findings suggest disgust memory enhancement extends to accurate memory, which has clinical implications.

Studies exploring psychopathology and memory distortions have often focused on spontaneous false memories (i.e., resulting from internal processes). We examined the relationship between psychopathology and suggestion-induced false memories. Community participants completed psychopathology measures and a standard misinformation procedure involving a trauma analogue film. Depression severity was associated with a larger misinformation effect. Higher trauma exposure counts were associated with a smaller misinformation effect, and personal relevance towards the target event influenced this relationship. These results advance theory on psychopathology and memory distortions, and have practical implications for clinical and forensic settings where people are tasked with accurately recalling witnessed events.

Studies present mixed findings on how emotions affect false memory formation. We investigated the effects of emotional valence and mood on false autobiographical memories. Using the blind implantation method, 242 participants underwent mood induction and were presented with a false event suggestion. Results showed that 6% to 35% developed false beliefs or recollections. While mood had no impact on false memory formation, negative events led to higher false belief and recollection ratings than positive ones, supporting the Associative Activation model. These findings underscore the risks of suggestive techniques in therapeutic settings, potentially leading to false traumatic memories.