By: Jess Principe
In my opinion, the stronger the memory is to the person, the more valuable the experience was to the person. If something very exciting happens in your life such as graduating high school, scoring your first goal in a sports event, or meeting someone you love for the first time, those memories will be stronger and stick with you longer because the experience was very important to you as well. Likewise, the scariest experiences a person encounters in their lives will be just as scarring from a memory standpoint as well. For our generations, the Sandy Hook School shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, and Hurricane Katrina all stick out to me and I can remember exactly where I was when all three happened because I was scared during those events, as well as scared during the aftermath of these events when viewing them through social media.
An interesting way to test the strength of memories is to ask a randomly selected group of people to identify their top three happiest memories and scariest memories and have them summarize where they were or what they were doing when these memories occured. If the memories are significant events (whether they are exciting or scary) in their life or to the outside global community, then it would be easy to confirm that the stronger the memories, the more significant the event. If the memories seem to be random days or insignificant events that seem to still stick strongly to the person, then it conveys that memories can be strong but arise from insignificant events.
Jess Principe's Blog 
Hi Jess!
I appreciate your thoughts on why we remember good events as well as scary ones. The brain is more likely to remember something that has significance to us. In some situations, we can even give words meanings to induce deep processing, which tends to produce the best retention rates because it is memory based on the meaning of words, and as you noticed, the brain likes to remember things that have meaning. These memories that we can remember so vividly and can describe are called explicit memories. We often think of how easy it is to remember the happiest days, but the scariest days are also well remembered because they too have meaning, which leads us to process the events deeply and form explicit memories.
A very thoughtful first impression on memory!
Emily
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