The Power Of Photographs To Prime Emotions

• Our brains tend to pick up things in the environment and incorporate them into emotions almost unconsciously. Positive image-> positive emotion 

• I Matter: He says when parents choose to display pictures of their kids at home; it sends a powerful message to the children that they matter 

• With the ease of modern smart phones, we are all taking more photos than ever. Which is wonderful. But sadly, most of them are quickly forgotten in a computer drive or in your camera’s memory card. Photos that don’t get looked at or talked about are almost useless. They lose their whole purpose. 

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Remembering, Forgetting, and Feeling with Photographs

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• Photographs are charged with unexpected emotional material that triggers intense feelings 

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Mental imagery in emotion and emotional disorders

• Images are supposed to be particularly effective in provoking emotion when the images include “response propositions”: that is, information pertaining to associated autonomic or behavioral responses 

• While this evidence is thus not conclusive, it seems plausible that emotional systems in the brain might be particularly sensitive to imagery because basic emotions such as fear evolved relatively early in our evolutionary history, to facilitate responding to sensory events signaling danger (or reward). Sensory cues can elicit rapid responses from brain areas implicated in emotion, such as the amygdala, bypassing the need for higher level processing by other cortical areas (LeDoux, 2000). 

• Extent that the memories accessed include feelings experienced during prior episodes, the constructed image is likely to reinstate the same emotion 

Sundaramoorthy, Kavetha. “The Power of Photographs to Prime Emotions.” Https://Www.tiffinbox.org/, 27 June 2013, www.tiffinbox.org/the-power-of-photographs-to-prime-emotions/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2024.

Mannik, Lynda. “Remembering, Forgetting, and Feeling with Photographs.” Oral History and Photography, 2011, pp. 77–95, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120099_5.

Holmes, Emily A., and Andrew Mathews. “Mental Imagery in Emotion and Emotional Disorders.” Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 30, no. 3, Apr. 2010, pp. 349–362, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.001.