Forgetting having denied: The “amnesic” consequences of denial.

The concept of denial has its roots in psychoanalysis. Denial has been assumed to be effective in blocking unwanted memories. In two experiments, we report that denial has unique consequences for remembering. In our two experiments, participants viewed a video of a theft, and half of the participant...

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Published in:Memory & Cognition Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. 520 - 530
Main Authors: Otgaar, Henry, Romeo, Tameka, Ramakers, Niki, Howe, Mark L.
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature May2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Forgetting having denied: The “amnesic” consequences of denial.
      aug:
        au:
          Otgaar, Henry
          Romeo, Tameka
          Ramakers, Niki
          Howe, Mark L.
        affil:
          Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
          City University of London, London, UK
          Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience Section Forensic Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
      su:
        Deception
        Denial (Psychology)
        Memory
        Psychoanalysis
        Recognition (Psychology)
        Repression (Psychology)
        Theft
        Task performance
        Amnesia
        Audiovisual materials
        Experimental design
      sug:
        subj:
          Deception
          Denial (Psychology)
          Memory
          Psychoanalysis
          Recognition (Psychology)
          Repression (Psychology)
          Theft
          Task performance
          Amnesia
          Audiovisual materials
          Experimental design
      keyword:
        Denial
        Forgetting
        Repression
        Denial
        Forgetting
        Repression
      ab: The concept of denial has its roots in psychoanalysis. Denial has been assumed to be effective in blocking unwanted memories. In two experiments, we report that denial has unique consequences for remembering. In our two experiments, participants viewed a video of a theft, and half of the participants had to deny seeing certain details in the video, whereas the other half had to tell the truth. One day later, all participants were given either a source-monitoring recognition or a recall task. In these tasks, they were instructed to indicate (1) whether they could remember talking about certain details and (2) whether they could recollect seeing those details in the video. In both experiments, we found that denial made participants forget that they had talked about these details, while leaving memory for the video itself unaffected. This denial-induced forgetting was evident for both the source-monitoring recognition and recall tests. Furthermore, when we asked participants after the experiment whether they could still not remember talking about these details, those who had to deny were most likely to report that they had forgotten talking about the details. In contrast to a widely held belief, we show that denial does not impair memory for the experienced stimuli, but that it has a unique ability to undermine memory for what has been talked about.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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