Forgetting history: The mnemonic consequences of listening to selective recountings of history

Abstract

Our aim here is to delineate the connection between selective remembering and selective forgetting as it applies to lay historians listening to selective recountings of history. How does what a speaker remembers about a nation’s past shape what is forgotten about the nation’s past for the listener? To address this question, we will discuss psychological research demonstrating the mnemonic consequences of this selectivity with an emphasis on retrieval-induced forgetting within social settings. In particular, we highlight how selectively remembering nationally relevant, historical events may induce forgetting of related historical information for the listener, and this forgetting may not only have important implications for individual and national identities but said identities may influence both what is remembered and forgotten. We end with some concluding thoughts and areas of future research.