The Psychology of Being Forgotten

It is easy to forget a name after a first introduction, to fail to recognize an acquaintance out of context, or to forget the details of past a conversation. Conversely, people sometimes find that they are unrecognized, called by the wrong name, or forced to remind someone about the details of a past conversation. Modern science can say quite a bit about this first set of experiences, about forgetting other people. Who and what we forget has been a major theme in psychological research since its beginnings. Strikingly, however, modern science can say almost nothing about the experience of being forgotten, defined here as having one's identity, characteristics, or actions (including verbal statements) misremembered or not remembered by another person. This omission is especially odd as being forgotten can clearly have a large interpersonal impact (e.g., having one's birthday forgotten by family or close friends, or having one's name forgotten in repeated meetings) and might thus function as an unrecognized channel of social information in interpersonal interaction.

I propose that, relative to being remembered, being forgotten signals that the subject of forgetting is unimportant, that is, not worthy of sustained attention and thought. This is a reasonable inference for people to draw because memory actually does reflect importance; greater care and attention leads to better memory, all other things being equal.

A first set of studies will test the idea that being forgotten signals unimportance in two ways. In some studies, people will watch videos of interactions in which one person forgets another and will then be asked what they infer about the interaction that they witnessed. In another study, people will be asked to keep a diary of their daily experiences of being forgotten, and those daily records will be coded and analyzed to extract both a description of being forgotten in daily life as well as information about what people infer and feel when they are forgotten.

A second set of studies will examine how being forgotten interacts with other signals of importance, specifically with direct verbal communications of importance and with non-verbal indications of importance. Forgetting provides genuine evidence of resource investment (i.e., time and energy), whereas direct verbal communications about importance or non-verbal indications of importance can be produced spontaneously. Because of this asymmetry, I suspect that the importance conveyed by forgetting will be given more weight than either direct verbal communications about importance or non-verbal indications of importance. That is, forgetting might be interpreted as a relatively honest signal of importance.

In these studies, participants will watch recorded communications in which memory and forgetting will sometimes occur alongside other signals of importance and will sometimes be separated from other signals of importance. Participants will then report their beliefs about the thoughts and feelings of the person in the recorded communication. These studies will systematically examine instances in which memory and forgetting converge with other signals of importance, as well as instances in which memory and forgetting suggest different conclusions than do other signals of importance. These studies will thus determine if memory and forgetting can enhance the content of communications consistent with the importance implied by memory and forgetting as well whether memory and forgetting undermine communications that are inconsistent with the importance implied by memory and forgetting.

A key strength of this program is that it examines multiple facets of being forgotten with multiple methods. The proposed studies investigate the experience and implications of being forgotten both inside and outside the lab, as well as how being forgotten interfaces with other communications.