What if it wasn’t a fault but a quality to not remember other people’s first names? This is what psychology seems to suggest. This behavior, which can make one very uncomfortable, would be a sign of a specific cognitive ability…
In psychology, all our behaviors have meaning. Who has never felt this moment of solitude: we come across a person, the face is familiar to us, but their first name remains stuck in the twists and turns of our brain. “Often what emerges is a feeling of embarrassment, shame, and sometimes even guilt.“, explains clinical psychologist Aline Nativel Id Hammou. Behind this little social “bug” hide mechanisms linked to our state of fatigue, to our stress, but also to the way in which our memory prioritizes the information that we receive on a daily basis.
Forgetting a first name is not due to an erasure of memory but to an incident in the brain’s machinery. A first name is arbitrary data: unlike a face or a profession which activate sensory or emotional networks, a first name often has no logical link with the person. Two technical “failures” can then occur. Either it is a phonological blockage: the brain perfectly identifies the person (the file is open), but the connection to the sound label (the name) is cut by stress or fatigue. Either, we’re talking about interference: if you know too many “Pierre” or “Marie”, your brain can saturate and, to save energy, choose not to store yet another repetition in favor of more complex and new information.
So if you forget first names, it may simply be because your brain is too efficient to bother with secondary details. This is where this famous intellectual capacity resides: optimization through vacuum. “As we age, or depending on the context, a kind of hierarchy takes place at the memory level.“, deciphers Aline Nativel Id Hammou. Your brain does not seek to embarrass you, it seeks to be efficient. “Your brain’s goal is to optimize your performance. It needs to free up space to integrate new, more complex information“. In other words, your intellect favors function (what is this person for?) rather than label (what is their name?), demonstrating a superior capacity for synthesis and adaptation.
In some cases, forgetting can even have an analytical origin, acting as a defense mechanism. “In psychoanalysis, an oversight always has meaning. A first name that is associated with a negative experience, a breakup or a loss, creates a kind of protective blockage that prevents us from integrating it in a positive way.“, explains the psychologist. Is it inevitable to forget first names? Not at all. If this selective sorting is the sign of a brain which favors the essentials, it can be worked on if social embarrassment becomes too heavy or if others start to make repeated remarks. “We can try to work on this encoding deficit through long-term memory exercises or by associating a real usefulness with the first name.“, suggests the psychologist. For example, you meet a certain “Sophie” who works in accounting. Instead of just repeating “Sophie”, tell yourself: “Sophie is the one who will unlock my expense reports.” By associating her first name with a concrete and important action for you, you force the brain to consider the information as “priority” during encoding.
The important thing remains to play down the drama and analyze the context: is the forgetting occasional? Frequent ? Do you only forget the first names of people you meet occasionally or also in more regular social contexts? Age must also be taken into account. If forgetting becomes systematic and extends to other types of information, it may be a natural phenomenon of the brain seeking to save energy. “We must remain in a form of little vigilance”advises the psychologist.
