Directed Forgetting Affects How We Remember and Judge Other People

Abstract

The present study asks whether behaviors of another person can be intentionally forgotten, and whether forgetting affects how that person is evaluated. Participants read about negative and neutral behaviors of a fictional character and were then asked to forget or to keep remembering them. Afterwards, all participants learned of neutral behaviors associated with another character. After a short distractor or a 24-hour delay, implicit and explicit evaluations of both characters and memory for their behaviors were assessed. Implicit evaluations did not differ between the two characters and were insensitive to forget instructions. In comparison to the remember condition, participants who were told to forget recalled fewer of the first character's behaviors, and explicitly judged him as warmer and less dominant. Importantly, memory was negatively correlated with warmth and positively correlated with dominance ratings. The study shows that intentional forgetting can have long-lasting consequences for memory and explicit judgments of others.