Group-dependent selective forgetting in Arab-Israeli children

People use social cues to determine which, among the wealth of information in the world, is worth attending to. Notably, social cues indicate not only what information is worth remembering but also what information is not. Indeed, research with adults shows that people are more likely to selectively forget information based on cues from an ingroup member than an outgroup member, suggesting that the cognitive process of forgetting can be socially driven. In the current work, we examine whether such a group-dependent process of selective forgetting is apparent already in children. Specifically, Arab-Israeli children (N = 98) aged 8-13 were introduced to a presentation with information about a summer camp program and later listened to either an ingroup (Arab-Israeli) or an outgroup (Jewish-Israeli) member repeat certain details while omitting others. Following this, participants were asked to recall the information from the presentation. We found that listening to an ingroup member impaired children's recall of unmentioned, related items more than unmentioned, unrelated items, whereas after listening to an outgroup member children were equally likely to forget both types of information. Of note, the strength of children's ethnic identification and parents' ethnic socialization goals did not impact group-dependent selective forgetting, suggesting that the effect may be led by social categorization rather than identification. The findings indicate that the cognitive process of forgetting can be socially driven already in childhood and that children's personal memory can change through interaction with ingroup members, arguably, as part of the process of developing group-shared knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).