We live in a society where we're obsessed with capturing every single moment of our life, from first day of school selfies to what we had for lunch. While some might be bored with seeing and reading play by plays of everyone's day, new research finds that capturing even simple moments in life can bring us "unexpected joy" in the future.
Researchers from the Harvard Business School conducted several tests to uncover why people favor documenting "extraordinary moments" over more boring and simple moments like conversations between friends or a routine day at work.
For one particular test, 135 college students at the beginning of the summer were asked to create a time capsule that included them writing about a conversation with a friend and about the last social function they went to. The researchers predicted if the participants would be curious and surprised when they looked back at the capsule three months later.
Published in the August edition of Psychological Science, researchers found that the study participants enjoyed the experience of looking back at the memories, "significantly" underestimating just how much interest the simple memories sparked.
Rediscovering the memories, lead researcher Tim Zhang says, "highlighted the importance of not taking the present for granted and documenting the mundane moments of daily life."
"We generally do not think about today's ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future," says Zhang, a psychological scientist at Harvard Business School. "However, our studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future."
The researchers repeated the study for a second, this time online. The findings were consistent to the previous study.
So next time someone mocks you for Instagramming your meal or taking an artsy picture during a coffee meetup, you can respond to them with a valid, scientific defense.
