Mass shooting survivors' memories are full of sensory detail, both positive and negative
It was perhaps fitting, in a twisted, only-in-America way.
The day William B. Ridgway and his colleagues met to analyze narratives from mass shooting survivors, a gunman killed three faculty members in a neighboring building. Mass shootings in the United States have steadily increased since the 1960s, with over 500 incidents and nearly 1,800 fatalities. Ridgway, now an operational psychologist at NASA, wanted to understand what survivors remember from these traumatic experiences and what themes emerge.
Most existing research on memory during extreme stress comes from lab studies or clinical samples, which don't accurately replicate the terror of a mass shooting. The analysis of 42 survivors from the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas, which killed 60 people in 2017, revealed that survivors' memories were not globally impaired but shaped in selective and patterned ways.
Four main themes emerged: contextual memory (sensory-perceptual and spatial details), temporal distortion, physical injury (to themselves or others), and acts of heroism or contemplating mortality. The study found that survivors recalled compassion for others with the same precision as they did the gunfire, indicating that these memories were encoded with the same intensity as the terror.
These findings suggest the importance of continued support for survivors and acknowledgment of the resiliency and unity within communities.
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