Unexpected Events Resist Directed Forgetting
Alex Kafkas, Aisha Mukhtar, Sadie Griffiths, Jingqiu Zhou · 2026
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Description
Alex Kafkas, Aisha Mukhtar, Sadie Griffiths, and Jingqiu Zhou tested whether surprising events resist being deliberately forgotten. In their 2026 experiment, volunteers first learned rules linking symbols to kinds of pictures. They then saw new emotional and neutral items that either followed the rule or broke it. Each item carried an instruction to remember it or forget it.
Unexpected items were remembered better than expected ones, especially with rich, detailed recollection, and that edge survived even when people had been told to forget them. Forget instructions did weaken recollection overall, but far less for the rule-breaking items. Feeling played a smaller part: the surprise advantage showed for negative and neutral items but not positive ones, while resistance to forgetting held regardless. The results portray deliberate forgetting as a process that encoding surprises can blunt.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Alex Kafkas, Aisha Mukhtar, Sadie Griffiths, Jingqiu Zhou |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 68064 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |