By Dulce Zamora

Sept. 5 (CBSHealthWatch)--People who hide their true feelings during a certain event may have a hard time remembering details of the occasion. According to a new study, the method that a person chooses to control emotions may have an effect on their memory.

"When you go about trying to change your emotions--by focusing on keeping your face or other behaviors in line with an idea you have on how you should be responding--that costs you cognitively," says one of the study's authors, James Gross, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. "Let's pretend you're in a job interview and you're working very hard not to let certain negative emotions show. When people suppress their emotions in that way, they are not as able to remember critical information that's given to them."

The findings, researchers say, suggest that the processes of thinking and feeling are interconnected. They don't suggest that people shouldn't ever suppress their emotions because sometimes that may be appropriate, says Gross.

Investigators also looked at another form of controlling emotions, formally called reappraisal. With this method, Gross says people try to change their way of thinking about an event. "So instead of thinking, 'Gee, my colleague hates me,' and getting upset, you in fact, try to say, 'Well, look, I just have to remember that he's going through a really hard time.'"

The study found suppressing emotions affected memory, while reappraisal didn't have the same effect. Researchers hypothesize that reappraisal takes up fewer resources in the brain. "It takes just a moment to [reappraise a situation], and once you've done it, you're done," says Gross. "Whereas with the suppression case, you're ruminating about it, you're trying not to let it show, not to let it influence your work--that takes all morning."

At least one expert says the findings make sense.

"It's hard for people to do two things at the same time unless one of them is overlearned," says Eric Klinger, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota in Morris and Minneapolis. 'Overlearned' skills are reportedly those that have been done so frequently that they can be done without a lot of thought, such as the proverbial chewing gum and walking at the same time.

For good mental health, Klinger says reappraisal may be a more efficient way of dealing with feelings. Reappraisal, he says, "is more efficient because it then regulates your emotion and then at that point it's over, and it's no longer interfering with whatever else you're trying to do."

(From AOL.com)