감정적 망각에 대한 부정성 효과

Negativity Effect on Emotional Forgetting

Consumers are exposed to a number of information about companies whether they want it or not. As they get exposed to a huge amount of information during a short period of time, the consumers get to retain only a fraction of what they have seen and heard, and most of the information given to the consumers is gone unnoticed or forgotten. However, companies want consumers to remember about them more than about their competitors, so they are making efforts to find ways to have consumers retain positive information about their company for longer periods. However, among information about a company, there is not only positive information but negative one. Negative information about a company has bigger impact than the positive one, and the negative information can spread like wildfire due to the power of the internet. In addition, the negative emotion toward a company induced by negative information can last long and have a bigger influence on consumers’ decision-making process. Against this backdrop, companies need to make efforts to encourage consumers to forget negative information about them and prevent subsequent negative emotion. Therefore, this study aims to examine how consumers eventually get to forget the negative information about a company. First, the study will examine the level of emotional forgetting depending on the level of negativity. Second, the study looks into whether the empathy that the consumers felt with the information serves as a moderating variable for the effect of negative information on emotional forgetting. The results of the research show that there is a difference in the level of emotional forgetting depending on the level of negativity, and empathy does serve as a moderating variable. As only few studies have been conducted on the forgetting, the study provided an opportunity to recognize how important the issue is.