Directed forgetting of political information revisited

Waldum and Sahakyan (2012) reported that directed forgetting (DF) of political statements depends on congeniality: participants selectively forgot politically incongruent statements, while congruent statements were unaffected. The present study tested whether this pattern replicates in a contemporary political context. In Experiment 1, 79 U.S. adults studied two lists of Democratic- and Republican-framed statements and received either a forget or remember instruction after List 1. Congruency was defined by participants’ political affiliation. In Experiment 2, 84 U.S. adults completed the same paradigm but rated their personal agreement with each statement, allowing recall to be examined as a function of both party-based congruency and subjective endorsement. Across both experiments, recall did not differ between congruent and incongruent statements in the remember condition, and the forget cue did not selectively reduce recall of incongruent statements. A pooled analysis ( N = 163, >2.5 times the original sample) had approximately 97% power to detect a selective DF effect of the size originally reported, and the original effect size fell outside the confidence interval for the present estimate. Together, these findings do not replicate the selective DF pattern reported previously and are inconsistent with an effect of the magnitude originally observed. One possibility is that repeated exposure to both congenial and anti-congenial political content in contemporary media environments has reduced the contextual distinctiveness on which the original effect depends. Alternative explanations, including differences in materials and online administration, are discussed.