A shared universe › Blog › Taking photos of the good moments · Español
“Put the camera down and enjoy it.” You hear it at weddings, on trips, at birthdays and school plays, and it sounds like common sense: whoever is busy with the photo misses what is happening. When a group of researchers put it to the test, they found something more interesting.
In 2016, Kristin Diehl, of the University of Southern California, Gal Zauberman, of Yale University, and Alixandra Barasch, of the University of Pennsylvania, published nine experiments with more than two thousand people, some in the street and some in the laboratory. The participants did an activity, such as a sightseeing bus tour, a meal in a restaurant area or a walk round an exhibition, and some were asked to take photos while others were asked not to.
In almost every case, those who took photos enjoyed it more. The reason was not the photo itself but what comes with it: to choose what to photograph, you pay more attention. In the exhibition, glasses that recorded where the gaze went showed that those who took photos spent more time looking at the pieces.
Another group was asked to take photos only in their minds, without a camera, choosing which moment to keep. They also enjoyed it more.
The effect had clear limits:
The authors also warn that cameras that record on their own, with nobody deciding what to keep, would hardly have the same effect. What adds something is the choice.
In 2018, the same team, with Barasch in the lead, published five experiments on another question: does it make a difference to take the photo with sharing it in mind? The answer was yes. Those who photographed in order to show the images afterwards, for example on social media, enjoyed themselves less than those who did it to keep the memory. Thinking about how they would look in front of others brought a worry into the middle of the experience and took them out of it.
The effect depended on who the photos were for: when they were for people close to you, it weighed less. What takes something away does not seem to be sharing, but worrying about looking good in front of others. Telling your loved ones about it, on the other hand, is one of the ways of making a joy bigger.
Memory is another matter. In 2014, the psychologist Linda Henkel, of Fairfield University in the United States, took a group of students round her university’s art museum and asked them to photograph some pieces and simply look at others. The next day they remembered the ones they had photographed in full less well: fewer pieces and fewer details. Henkel explained it this way: when we trust that the camera will remember for us, we pay less attention. But when she asked them to zoom in on one particular detail, that forgetting disappeared.
In 2017, Barasch, Diehl and Zauberman, with another colleague, found that when each person freely decides what to photograph, they remember better what they saw. What suffers is what they heard: conversations, sounds, background music. And, once again, taking photos only in the mind had similar effects.
The camera guides attention: what you look at with intention stays, and what you do not escapes.
Taking the photo is only half of it. Henkel pointed out that the enormous number of photos we keep, and the disorder they end up in, means that many people never look at them again. To remember, she said, you need to go back to them, not just pile them up.
Going back to a good moment is one of the ways of savouring it that psychology has studied. Here are some ideas to stop your photos falling asleep:
Some moments don’t fit in a phone. You can keep that one too, in words, on a star in A shared universe with “What I’m grateful for”. For seven days, someone can share your joy.