One strategy for decision-making involves the process known as case-based reasoning, where individuals retrieve past decisions in similar cases, compare the new and old situation, and adapt previous decisions to the new context. However, remembering past cases is a selective process. Research on retrieval-induced forgetting found that retrieving a subset of information about a certain topic causes forgetting of related information. In two experiments we use retrieval-induced forgetting to activate and deactivate similar features between a new case and past cases. We measured whether this intervention impacted decision-making about a controversial policy and whether the positive and negative outcomes of past cases influenced both information accessibility and decision-making. Study 1 demonstrated socially-shared retrieval-induced forgetting: hearing others talk about non-critical features from the past cases reduced memory accessibility of critical but unmentioned features of the positive past case (i.e., success), but not for negative past case (i.e., failure), compared with a control condition. Study 2 demonstrated that individuals' decisions were consistent with the manipulated memory pattern. Individuals were less supportive of the controversial policy in a new case when they heard non-critical information in the positive past case, whereas individuals were no less supportive when hearing non-critical information in the negative past case, compared with the control condition. We speculate that failure to trigger retrieval-induced forgetting in negative cases might be due to a negativity bias in information processing. We discuss the implication of these results for real-world phenomena involving people using the past to reason about the future.

一种决策策略涉及称为基于案例推理的过程，其中个人在类似案例中检索过去的决策，比较新旧情况，并使先前的决策适应新的环境。然而，记住过去的案例是一个选择性的过程。对检索诱发遗忘的研究发现，检索某个主题的信息子集会导致相关信息的遗忘。在两个实验中，我们使用检索诱导的遗忘来激活和停用新案例和过去案例之间的相似特征。我们衡量了这种干预是否影响了有关有争议的政策的决策，以及过去案例的积极和消极结果是否影响了信息可及性和决策。研究 1 证明了社会共享的检索诱发的遗忘：与对照条件相比，听到其他人谈论过去案例中的非关键特征会降低对过去积极案例（即成功）的关键但未提及特征的记忆可及性，但对于消极过去案例​​（即失败）则不然。研究 2 表明，个人的决定与被操纵的记忆模式是一致的。与对照情况相比，当他们在过去的积极案例中听到非关键信息时，个人在新案例中对有争议的政策的支持较少，而在过去的消极案例中听到非关键信息时，个人对有争议的政策的支持程度并不低。我们推测，在消极情况下未能触发检索诱发的遗忘可能是由于信息处理中的消极偏见。