Why Forget? On the Adaptive Value of Memory Loss

Abstract

Is forgetting mostly a positive force in human life? On the surface, this seems to not be the case, and people often associate memory loss with frustration in their everyday lives. Yet, forgetting does not have exclusively negative consequences; it also serves valuable, indeed vital, functions. In this article, I review and reflect on evidence from various areas of research, and I argue that forgetting serves at least three broad purposes. First, it is part of emotion regulation, and it promotes subjective well-being by limiting access to negative memories and by reducing unpleasant affect. Forgetting thereby allows for positivity and painlessness. Second, it is involved in knowledge acquisition, and it provides a basis for obtaining semantic and procedural knowledge by allowing for abstraction and automatization. Third, forgetting is part of context attunement, and it orients information processing for the present and the future by facilitating environmental sensitivity and by ensuring that knowledge is current, which enables timeliness and updating. Overall, I suggest that forgetting helps people to be happy, well-structured, and context sensitive, and thereby that it serves fundamentally adaptive functions.