The dissociable effects of humorous reappraisal on free recall and recognition/implicit memory

Humour is regarded as an adaptive coping strategy which could effectively reduce negative emotions. To fundamentally evaluate the function of humour reappraisal, our study aimed to explore the emotion-regulatory advantage effect of humour reappraisal from the perspective of memory mechanisms. Using a learning-testing paradigm, we examined the memory effects of humour reappraisal: first presented humour (or non-humour) reappraisal interpretations of the negative pictures during the learning phase and tested the memory performance from three aspects: free recall, recognition, and implicit memory in the test phase. The results found a superior effect of humorous reappraisal in free recall performance but reduced memory performance for negative stimuli in the recognition and implicit tests. This may be due to the refined processing of humour reappraisal during encoding, the memory content being updated and transformed after cognitive reconstruction, and the original negative pictures no longer being familiar during recognition. The dissociable result in free recall and implicit/recognition of humorous reappraisal suggested that humour reappraisal was an optimal strategy for coping with negative stimuli by fundamentally regulating negative emotions through “cognitive restructuring” rather than “forgetting.” This provided advantageous evidence for the humour reappraisal as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy from a memory perspective.