Directed forgetting of faces

Differential effects on angry and neutral faces

Abstract

Directed forgetting effects on angry and neutral faces were investigated using the item method. Participants studied list items of angry or neutral faces. Half of the items are followed by a remember instruction, and half are followed by a forget instruction. Later, participants were tested for their recognition of the identical persons displaying different expressions including those that they were instructed to forget. The results provided evidence for the directed forgetting effect on angry faces: Items followed by forget instructions were better recognized than items followed by remember instructions. These findings suggest that the emotional valence of the item modulated the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect.