Terrorist attacks and tragic explosions. Last week was horrific. One city locked down because of terrorism and another destroyed by a fertilizer plant explosion. Like you, I’ve been following the news trying to understand why these things happen. Why do plants explode and why do young men explode? But I’ve also been wondering why are we so fascinated with understanding why?
The obvious answer may not be the correct answer. The obvious answer is that if we understand, we can change. If we know why the horrors occurred, we can prevent them in the future. Let’s face it though, I’m not going to be the person making the changes. But I am very interested in explaining these tragedies.
As luck would have it, I was just reading a research review that offered a different explanation of our fascination with explanations. Wilson and Ross (2003) suggested that we search for explanations to provide distance from tragic events. Distance is important in memory they argued. Things that we think of as close, we also think of as important to our self-concept. Things that are far away, we don’t connect to our current self. And closeness determines our emotional responses.
Distance is also important for memories because we all have beliefs that we change over time. Distance means I’m not the same person I once was. I’ve changed in the last 5 years and I’m definitely not the same person I was when I was 18. I like to believe that I’ve improved – better, smarter, kinder. Thus when I think of that 18 year old, I can remember things I did but feel that many of those events really aren’t about the person I am now. So time provides distance from my memories and my former selves. I can say that something happened in the distant past, but also note that it isn’t relevant to the current situation, to current me.
Time isn’t the only way to get distance. Wilson and Ross suggested other ways of creating distance. They noted that point of view in memory is important. You can see your memories from the original point of view – as if you are looking out at the world through your eyes. Or you can see your memories from an external perspective – seeing yourself as if you are looking at another person. You can also verbally describe your memories in the first person or in the third person, as if you are describing the event happening to someone else. You can even simply think of events as further or closer in time – treating three months ago as a long time by emphasizing how much has happened since then. All of these things make the memories further away, make them less about the current self, and less emotional. Making memories further away removes both positive and negative emotions. Thus Wilson and Ross suggested you might not want to use these techniques with happy memories. Keep the happy memories close to now and your current self.
Wilson and Ross also suggested that explanations add distance. When you can explain an event, that explanation makes the memory seem further away in time, further from the self, and removes some of the emotional content. So explanations provide distance, maybe because we have a belief that understanding comes with time. Thus if I have an explanation, the event must be distant from me in time. Even the way in which we describe past tragedies is consistent with the distance approach – putting it behind me, closing the door on that, and of course closure.
I want distance from these tragedies. I want them further in the past. Of course, seeing the tragedies as current and as part of an unending conflict means that they remain part of my current self, my current world view, and our national narrative. I can imagine that political parties might have different motivations with respect to keeping things current versus pushing them further into the past for these national tragedies. For me personally, I want to know why. I want to push these tragedies away so the horror dissipates.