Researchers analyzed written recollections from 42 people who survived the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. It turned out that extreme stress does not erase memory entirely but makes it selective: some details are preserved vividly, while others - for example, the sequence of events - may drop out. The results were published in the journal Psychological Science.
On October 1, 2017, a gunman on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel fired for about ten minutes at the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest festival. Sixty people died and more than 800 were injured. Within two weeks of the tragedy, researchers launched an online survey. For the new analysis they selected 42 adult survivors who had been at the scene and sent their accounts within a month. The average age of the participants was 42, and 74% of them were women.
Participants answered five open-ended questions: what was happening around them, what sounds, smells and other sensations there were, how they left the area, where they were, who they were with, what they felt, and what they would still like to understand. The responses were processed using thematic analysis - a qualitative approach in which specialists look for recurring themes in texts rather than counting numbers. In the end, four main themes were identified: contextual memory, physical injuries, heroism and thoughts of death.
Contextual memory proved to be the most common. Sensory details were present in all 42 accounts - the only feature found in absolutely every one. Often people first mistook the shots for fireworks and only later realized what was happening. Almost all the stories featured space: survivors recalled food trucks, chairs, dead ends, landmarks such as the casino and the airport as they searched for a way to safety.
Many described a distortion of time: events seemed to slow down or last an eternity. Some, by contrast, had gaps - periods of the escape dropped out of memory entirely. This echoes a 2023 laboratory experiment in which acute stress improved memory for individual objects but disrupted memory for the order of events.
Almost everyone mentioned physical injuries - their own or others'. About half or most of the accounts contained stories of heroism: people pressed their hands to others' wounds under gunfire, made tourniquets from belts, and shielded the wounded with their bodies. There were also quiet displays of support - for example, someone wrapped a stranger in shock in a kimono and held her hand.
The researchers were surprised that the good was remembered as vividly as the threat. "Laboratory work usually shows that positive emotions are remembered less well than negative ones, so I expected the accounts to be built almost exclusively around danger," said the lead author of the work, William Ridgeway. "But many described someone's help under fire with the same precision as the shots themselves."
About half of the participants recalled moments when they entertained the thought of their own death. More often this was accompanied by fear and confusion rather than calm, although several people spoke of sudden resignation. People thought about their loved ones and tried to call or text them.
The authors emphasize that they did not check the accounts against objective records, so what is at issue is what and how the participants remembered, not the accuracy of their memories. In addition, people typed their answers online at their own pace and could edit the text. The first question directly asked about sensations and the escape route, so the abundance of sensory and spatial details partly reflects the survey itself. But distortions of time, heroism and thoughts of death were not specifically prompted - which is precisely why the researchers consider them the most valuable.
The sample was predominantly female, which could also have influenced which details were remembered. The scientists plan to check whether the patterns hold with neutral questions and oral interviews, how the accounts change after years, and whether they resemble the memories of victims of other mass tragedies.