We're often told to "forgive and forget" the wrongs that we suffer -- it turns out that there may be some scientific truth behind the common saying. A study from researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland shows that the details of a transgression are more susceptible to forgetting when that transgression has been forgiven.
The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"It is well established that learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for an individual's physical and mental health," says Saima Noreen, lead author of the study. "The ability to forget upsetting memories may provide an effective coping strategy that enables people to move on with their lives."
From the perspective of cognitive science, overcoming strong negative emotions toward the person who did us wrong and quashing impulses for retribution or vengeance -- processes that are critical to forgiveness -- may be seen as a function of executive control.
And research suggests that this executive control is also involved in our ability to forget something when we're motivated to forget it.
Noreen decided to examine whether this same cognitive mechanism might form a link between forgiveness and forgetting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140513113609.htm
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