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.

本研究询问是否可以故意遗忘另一个人的行为，以及遗忘是否影响该人的评估方式。参与者阅读了虚构人物的消极和中立行为，然后被要求忘记或继续记住它们。之后，所有参与者都了解了与另一个角色相关的中立行为。短暂的干扰或24小时延迟后，对字符和记忆的行为进行了隐式和显式评估。两个字符之间的隐式评估没有区别，对忘记指令不敏感。与记忆状态相比，被告知要忘记的参与者回忆起第一个角色的行为较少，并明确地判断他的热情和主导地位较低。重要的，记忆与温暖呈负相关，与主导地位呈正相关。研究表明，故意遗忘会对他人的记忆和明确判断产生长期影响。