choseforget

Choseforget is a proposed cognitive phenomenon describing a tendency to forget or suppress information about options that were not chosen during a decision, while the chosen option's memory remains relatively clearer. It may occur as a result of selective rehearsal, emotional valence of the chosen option, or post-decisional cognitive processes that consolidate the selected memory and attenuate competing alternatives.

The term is a neologism formed from choose and forget, used in discussions of decision-making and memory rather than a formal niche of established theory.

Mechanisms include selective attention during decision making that reduces encoding of unchosen options; post-decision rehearsal that favors the chosen path; and retrieval processes later biasing recall toward the chosen option. Evidence is mixed and largely comes from experiments in controlled tasks such as multi-alternative choices and consumer decisions, showing that after a choice people recall fewer details about non-chosen options than about the chosen one.

Relation to other concepts involves links to choice-induced attitudes, memory biases, and post-decisional dissonance reduction. It is distinct from intentional forgetting schemes (e.g., directed forgetting) but can resemble motivated forgetting when unchosen options are emotionally inconsequential or anxiety-provoking.

Applications of the concept include informing the design of decision-support tools to reduce information load, informing therapy to understand regret and decision satisfaction, and guiding marketing studies of how consumers recall alternatives after making a choice.