Question framing can influence memories of emotions towards parents

For many, deconstructing relationships and interactions with parents can be a mainstay of the therapeutic experience.

Naturally, as part of this experience, therapists may ask questions about these important dynamics – normally in a neutral, non-leading way, designed to ensure clients can make sense of things on their own terms. Therapists should beware, though: according to a new study from Lawrence Patihis and Mario E. Herrera, it isn't just negatively framed questions that can change how we feel about our relationships. Even positively framed questions could lead people to reappraise their relationship with their parents.  

In their investigation, the team asked 301 US-based online participants to write a short passage, the topic of which changed depending on the condition they were in. For the first, they wrote about positive examples of their mother's warmth, competence, and love; in the second, examples of a lack of these qualities; in the third, negative examples of a teacher. Those in the fourth and final condition did not receive a writing prompt.

All participants then completed measures on how they currently rated their mothers on traits like warmth and generosity, reported positive and negative memories of emotions towards their mother at different stages of childhood and in the present day, and rated their current mood.

Analyses showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that those who appraised their mother positively reported feeling significantly happier about and more interested in their mother than those in the other conditions. Happiness was strongly associated with how positively participants saw their mother. This group also remembered feeling significantly happier towards their mothers during childhood (22.6% higher happiness than those in the negative appraisal condition). This suggests that reappraising one's parents can significantly impact your memories from childhood — though  these effects were relatively short lived, lasting around four weeks.

The next study took place over 16 weeks, with 302 participants meeting with the team three times over this period. As in the previous study, participants reported both current and remembered childhood feelings about their mother, before completing similar writing prompts designed to shift their appraisal positively or negatively, and answering questions about their feelings.

Similarly to the first study, those who appraised their mother positively saw an 18% increase in happiness and a 14% increase in their "interest" in her, though again this effect faded, this time after eight weeks. Interestingly, childhood memories seemed more resistant to change in this part of the study, with reappraisals only exerting a weak influence on participants' current feelings towards their mothers.

These findings overall suggest that engaging with thoughts of one's mother can change the way we feel — not only in the moment, but perhaps also when we think about the past. What the study didn't look at was neutral reappraisal, but future research could investigate what happens if a therapist asks us simply to describe our mother in more neutral, non-suggestive terms without eliciting either positive or negative appraisal.

We already know that memories are fallible, and that all sorts of factors can change the way we think or feel about something that's happened in the past. This study underlines that therapists should keep this in mind, and remain cautious of framing when discussing family relationships with clients. The team takes this one step further, and argues that clients should be informed at the outset of therapy about the potential for change in how they see their parents or others in their life.

Read the paper in full:
Patihis, L., & Herrera, M. E. (2024). Reappraising a Parent can Occur With Non-suggestive Questions: Changing Emotions and Memories of Emotion. Psychological Reports. https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941241283413

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