Individual differences in math anxiety and math self-concept promote forgetting in a directed forgetting paradigm

Students whose math self-concept is threatened in stressful classroom situations activate self-defense mechanisms to forget those experiences, which jeopardize future learning and knowledge retention. External cues to forget might be critical to activate these self-defense mechanisms. We tested this idea by employing a directed-forgetting paradigm using math-related materials. Participants were presented with math problems to enhance anxiety, followed by a list of math-related words with instructions to either remember or forget those words. All participants were then asked to remember a second math list. We predicted that people most vulnerable to experiencing threat—those with high math anxiety and high math self-concept—would have the internal motivation to most effectively carry out the forgetting instructions. Participants with high math anxiety and high math self-concept had a greater forgetting score than other participants. These findings are consistent with a motivated forgetting account and suggest that educational materials are susceptible to forgetting.