When your boss forgets your name: Interpersonal memory failure in the workplace

The current project aims to examine the effects of being forgotten in the workplace setting (e.g. forgetting someone's name or misremembering a colleague's contribution to a shared project). Similar to forgetting, being forgotten is an everyday occurrence that is intrinsically awkward and it makes people feel unimportant. Previous studies support this view and also show that it bears negative consequences to our feelings about those who forget us. However, being forgotten has not been explored in the workplace even though that is a setting in which we spend majority of our daily lives and have many interactions. I will determine what types of personal forgetting most commonly occur in the workplace, how it impacts employees, their commitment to the workplace, and whether there is a difference between being forgotten by another co-worker or your immediate boss. Importantly, the difference between forgetting and rudeness will be explored as well. We expect that being forgotten in the workplace will impact on employee's commitment and task performance, and on team cohesion. Furthermore, we expect that being forgotten by one's immediate boss will result in notably higher impact across outcomes. Employed participants will be recruited for a number of studies (interviews, experience sampling, behavioural experiments) that will investigate these hypotheses. My findings will show how simple memory lapses can affect psychological variables linked to such important outcomes as absenteeism and staff turnover. Ultimately, my findings could be used to make workplace environments more pleasant and productive.