Account for suppression’s memory cost

Suppressing emotion during a conversation impairs your memory of it — which has downstream costs to learning, relationships, and decisions.

Why it works

Maintaining active suppression consumes working memory resources. Because the same cognitive resources that manage suppression also encode episodic memory, people who suppress emotion during events show worse recall of the events afterward. This means that suppressed interactions are harder to learn from, reflect on, or make decisions based on — a compounding cost beyond the immediate physiological one.

How to do it

1. If you know you are entering a high-stakes interaction where you will be suppressing, plan to debrief explicitly afterward — writing a brief account before your memory degrades.
2. Do not make important relationship or professional decisions based on events you were suppressing through — your memory of those events is systematically incomplete.
3. When reviewing a past interaction and finding your recollection thin, consider whether suppression may have been active; seek additional information sources rather than trusting the incomplete recall.

Evidence

Richards and Gross demonstrated that participants who suppressed emotion during a distressing film clip showed significantly worse memory for the content of the clip compared to those who reappraised or were given no instructions. (rct)

Studies use brief laboratory paradigms; the magnitude and duration of memory impairment in naturalistic complex interactions have not been directly quantified.

Sources

• Richards & Gross (2000), Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keeping one’s cool, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Common mistake

Trusting your memory of suppressed interactions as if it were as complete as your memory of naturally experienced ones — the resource cost leaves genuine gaps.