The influence of shifts in visual perspective on emotion in event memories: A meta-analytical review

Memories for events can be remembered from an own-eyes perspective, which mimics the original experience by visualizing the event through our own eyes, or from an observer-like perspective, such that we can visualize ourselves and our surroundings in the memory. Shifting across these two visual perspectives during retrieval influences how the emotional aspects of the events are recalled, although the effect differs based on the direction of shifting. While shifting from an own-eyes to an observer-like perspective reduces emotion, shifting from an observer-like to an own-eyes perspective does not. The current meta-analysis aimed to quantify this asymmetrical pattern of shifting perspectives on emotion in event memories. A multilevel model of 12 publications with 49 individual effects revealed a small effect (Hedges's g = -.255, 95% CI [-.359, -.151]), reflecting a reduction in emotion when shifting to a novel visual perspective compared with the initial viewpoint adopted. Moderator analyses revealed that this effect was significant when shifting from an own-eyes to an observer-like perspective but not when shifting in the reverse direction. This asymmetrical pattern was associated with differences in the subjective vividness between initial and shifted conditions. Together, these results reveal that shifting perspective is a powerful way to reduce the emotions elicited in event memories by reshaping event characteristics. However, there are also limits in the effectiveness of this strategy in regulating emotional experiences.