Memories as assets: Strategic memory protection in choice over time
Zauberman, Ratner and Kim, Journal of Consumer Research 35(5), 2009, 715-728. Five studies on strategic memory protection. In the first two, people tended to avoid situations they thought would weaken recall of special memories, not only pleasant ones. In the last three, people sought out memory cues in advance, especially when they expected future events to interfere. The authors trace the preferences to lay beliefs about how important special memories are and how hard they are to obtain and retrieve.
Zauberman, Ratner and Kim, Journal of Consumer Research 35(5), 2009, 715-728. Five studies on strategic memory protection. In the first two, people tended to avoid situations they thought would weaken recall of special memories, not only pleasant ones. In the last three, people sought out memory cues in advance, especially when they expected future events to interfere. The authors trace the preferences to lay beliefs about how important special memories are and how hard they are to obtain and retrieve.
Written from the abstract, read at OpenAlex and Crossref record 2026-11-04.
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Zauberman, G., Ratner, R. K., & Kim, B. K. (2009). Memories as assets: Strategic memory protection in choice over time. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(5), 715-728. doi:10.1086/592943 https://doi.org/10.1086/592943