Watch your language: What I was doing vs. what I did

In a new study reported in the Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of Florida and Dolores Albarracín from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reveal the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used) affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior.

In these experiments, a group of volunteers was interrupted prior to finishing a word game and were then asked to describe their behavior using the imperfective (e.g., “I was solving word puzzles”) or perfective (e.g., “I solved word puzzles”).

The volunteers then completed a memory test about the word game itself.

It turns out the volunteers who had described their behavior using the imperfective were able to recall more specific details of their experience compared to volunteers who had described their behavior in the perfective aspect.

The volunteers writing in the imperfective aspect also performed better on a second word game and were more willing to complete the task than did volunteers who used the perfective to describe their experience.

The authors surmise that when we think about our past behavior in the imperfective (e.g., what we were doing), we tend to imagine that behavior as ongoing (and not completed yet). This enables us to easily think about what went into that behavior and may help us improve performance on similar tasks in the future.

These findings may be relevant to behavioral therapy. They suggest that “decreasing the frequency of unhealthy behaviors might be facilitated by discussing these behaviors in terms of “what I did.” In contrast, increasing the frequency of healthy behaviors might be facilitated by discussing these behaviors in terms of “what I was doing.”

For a copy of the article and access to other Psychological Science research findings, contact Barbara Isanski at bisanski@psychologicalscience.org