Voluntary forgetting of unwanted memories is an adaptive cognitive function. However, it remains unknown how voluntary forgetting of unwanted social feedback may influence subsequent memories and evaluations, and what the underlying neurocognitive processes are. Here, we presented participants with peer photos together with feedback indicating social acceptance or rejection, followed by “remember” or “forget” instructive cues, while electroencephalograms were recorded during the experiment. We examined the Directed Forgetting (DF) effect in a recognition memory test, and tested participants' explicit and implicit attitudes toward the peers using a social evaluation task and an affect misattribution procedure (AMP). Both the memory test and the AMP were examined immediately and 3 days after the DF task so to estimate both the instant and the long‐term effects of memory control. Behaviorally, immediate memory test showed smaller DF effect for positive than negative social feedback, which suggests that forgetting positive social feedback was more difficult than forgetting negative social feedback. Regarding the ERP results, although participants showed comparable frontal N2 amplitudes (reflecting inhibitory control efforts) following the instruction of forgetting positive and negative social feedback, positive feedback elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than negative feedback during initial encoding phase, suggesting an encoding bias for positive self‐relevant information. Intriguingly, voluntary efforts to forget negative social feedback enhanced people's explicit and implicit evaluations toward the feedback senders. These findings provide new evidence for the adaptive function of memory control, which broadens the influence of voluntary forgetting in the context of social interaction and social evaluation.

中文翻译：

---

忘记积极的社会反馈是困难的：定向遗忘范式中的 ERP 证据

自愿忘记不想要的记忆是一种适应性认知功能。然而，自愿忘记不需要的社会反馈如何影响随后的记忆和评估，以及潜在的神经认知过程是什么，仍然未知。在这里，我们向参与者展示了同伴照片以及表明社会接受或拒绝的反馈，然后是“记住”或“忘记”的指导性线索，同时在实验过程中记录脑电图。我们在识别记忆测试中检查了定向遗忘 (DF) 效应，并使用社会评估任务和情感错误归因程序 (AMP) 测试了参与者对同伴的显性和隐性态度。在 DF 任务后立即和 3 天检查记忆测试和 AMP，以估计记忆控制的即时和长期影响。在行为上，即刻记忆测试显示正面社会反馈的 DF 效应小于负面社会反馈，这表明忘记正面社会反馈比忘记负面社会反馈更困难。关于 ERP 结果，尽管参与者在忘记正面和负面社会反馈的指导下表现出相当的正面 N2 振幅（反映抑制控制努力），但在初始编码阶段，正反馈比负反馈引起更大的晚期正电位 (LPP) 振幅，这表明积极的自我相关信息的编码偏差。耐人寻味的是，自愿忘记负面社会反馈的努力增强了人们对反馈发送者的显性和隐性评价。这些发现为记忆控制的适应性功能提供了新的证据，扩大了自愿遗忘在社会互动和社会评价背景下的影响。