Book recommendations & my crappy memory

A new article by Aaker, Drolet, and Griffin in the Journal of Consumer Research¹ says our memories are less reliable for experiences that provoke mixed emotions. We tend to remember our feelings as more definite than they were, and over time we forget the intensity of our initial mixed feelings.

I can think of a number of implications for marketing. But for us consumers, do we trick ourselves into remembering each book as all feel-good or all chills, and pure gold or utter tripe? Should we only recommend books we've read recently?

Mixed might as well be "meh"

Aaker et al. focused partly on responses to media (videos designed to evoke happy or mixed feelings), so the experiments should have some relevance to fiction. I have mixed reactions to a lot of books; Aaker et al.’s experiments found that many people had mixed emotions about experiences immediately afterward. I know I’ve misremembered books as more solidly good or bad than they really were; Aaker et al.’s subjects did much the same, later remembering their feelings as more black-or-white or "unipolar".

But some things can’t be assessed by introspection; an experimental setting is required. For instance, the experiments found that mixed feelings tend to fade until people don’t clearly recall their initial reaction. If that’s true of reading, then:

1. My memory shifts books from "Mixed" reactions (often authors I would try again) into "Didn't leave an impression" (usually the end of the road). I'm probably missing out on some interesting authors.
   
2. My memory of which books didn't excite me is useless—it's a mishmash of meh and mixed reactions.

When books are like crack

Aaker et al. hypothesize that mixed emotions create a sense of conflict, and that people unaccustomed to cultural conflict (specifically Anglo-Americans) forget their mixed emotions to avoid or resolve that conflict. They do recognize some weaknesses in their hypothesis: they note that "not all people feel conflicted when experiencing mixed emotions". Still, I’d like to see them test some completely different hypotheses that don’t assume mixed = conflict = bad.

What if sometimes readers seek that conflict? I enjoy books that mix happy with sad. If a book disturbs me as much as it attracts, I might not race to pick up that author's next book… but then again, I might. Isn't that partly why we describe books as "crack"? They're terrible and wonderful, and that mixed reaction is part of the attraction? How about an experiment that assesses whether people are stimulated by mixed-affect media, and whether they come back for more?

Old not-so-favorites

Here's another angle. Why do so many of us seek out old books we haven't read in years? Logic says that books we read when young, particularly books we don't remember clearly, might not be the most interesting to us today. So why the interest?

Under Aaker et al.'s hypothesis, perhaps older books seem more definite. Good or bad, maybe the voices seem more distinct. I'm sure that's part of the explanation, but I'll also make another pitch for my hypothesis of attraction/repulsion. After all, look at the Smart Bitches’ Help a Bitch Out requests: many are seeking books that both horrify and delight the requester and the site's readership. I'd love to see research on what makes a work so bad it's good. Better yet, I'd love to be one of the experimental subjects. Imagine what I would get to watch and read.

Sources

¹ Jennifer Aaker, Aimee Drolet, and Dale Griffin (2008). "Recalling Mixed Emotions". Journal of Consumer Research 35(2):268–278.

• News releases and short summaries: e! Science News, Medical News Net, Science Daily