The Effect of Active Forgetting on Negative Emotion and its Cognitive Mechanism

Yang Wenjing; Liu Qi; Jia Hui

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240505

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (5) : 1069-1079. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240505

General Psychology，Experimental Psychology & Ergonomics

The Effect of Active Forgetting on Negative Emotion and its Cognitive Mechanism

Yang Wenjing, Liu Qi, Jia Hui

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Abstract

Active forgetting is a cognitive process designed to facilitate the loss of certain memories by modifying either the state of the memory itself or the neural pathways leading to it. This process has significant implications for how individuals manage their memories, especially negative ones, which can affect mental health and emotional well-being. Recent research on active forgetting has focused primarily on its effects on individual memory, while few empirical studies have examined how it affects the negative emotion triggered by the negative memory. To fill this gap, the current study used the classic Think/No-Think (TNT) paradigm to investigate the effects of active forgetting on negative emotions and the associated cognitive mechanisms. The research was conducted in two separate experiments.
In the first experiment, 43 college students participated as paid volunteers in the TNT paradigm using sixty object-picture pairs. Neutral object pictures were presented as cues, with the paired negative images acting as the targets for suppression. A crucial part of this experiment was examining how active forgetting can be used to mitigate the emotional response to negative stimuli. Before and after the TNT phase, participants rated the pleasantness and arousal elicited by these negative images. The results from this phase of the study provided insightful data on how effectively the TNT paradigm can alter emotional processing. The second experiment extended the investigation to autobiographical memories and involved 53 undergraduate students. The procedure mirrored that of Experiment 1, but the materials were adapted to include personal memories. Similar to Experiment 1, both subjective and objective measures were assessed before and after the TNT phase to evaluate changes in the participants' emotional responses.
The results of Experiment 1 revealed a significant suppression-induced forgetting (SIF) effect, consistent with prior studies, suggesting that repeated retrieval inhibition could mitigate forgetting. This effect was observed across five different subjective and objective memory indicators, extending previous research by incorporating various memory indices from both subjective and objective perspectives. Notably, there were significant changes in affective measures of pleasantness and arousal following the TNT phase. Participants reported increased pleasantness and decreased arousal of the materials, indicating that they were capable of actively forgetting negative memories through repeated retrieval inhibition. More importantly, suppression forgetting could reduce the negative affective experiences induced by these negative memories.
Experiment 2 aimed to determine if the SIF effect observed in Experiment 1 could extend to self-related autobiographical memories. Similar to the first experiment, the results also showed a SIF effect on the autobiographical memories. Moreover, repeated retrieval suppression also reduced negative emotional responses to these autobiographical memories. Specifically, participants' self-reported pleasantness increased after the TNT phase. Additionally, the self-reported arousal of the materials decreased after the TNT phase. The results suggest that forgetting suppression through repeated retrieval inhibition is effective for personally relevant memories and significantly enhances individuals' emotional pleasantness toward negative autobiographical memories.
In summary, this study provides empirical evidence for the role of memory control in emotion regulation. It demonstrates that motivated forgetting reduces individuals' negative emotional responses to negative memories. The process of retrieval inhibition diminishes not only the detail and vividness of the memory, but also the associated negative emotional reactions. While most previous studies have focused on the SIF effect in memory control, this study highlights the importance of memory control in emotion regulation and proposes active forgetting as a potential strategy for managing negative emotions in daily life. Future research is needed to explore the neural mechanisms that facilitate the SIF effect and to determine how these processes can be enhanced or targeted in therapeutic settings. Additionally, studies could investigate the long-term effects of active forgetting on mental health and emotional well-being.

Key words

active forgetting / Think/ No-Think(TNT) / retrieval inhibition / negative emotion / autobiographical memory

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Yang Wenjing, Liu Qi, Jia Hui. The Effect of Active Forgetting on Negative Emotion and its Cognitive Mechanism[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(5): 1069-1079 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240505

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