Why do humans forget important things, but maintain embarrassing things like when we called our teacher mom?

Question

Why do humans forget important things, but maintain embarrassing things like when we called our teacher mom?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Our ape brain is less evolved to remember facts and more evolved to try and prevent bad things from happening to us in the future based on our past experiences.

For instance, the social stigma/embarrassment of calling our teacher “mom” is a thing the brain doesn’t want us to forget because social stigma could mean death in a world where not getting to sit by the fire means getting attacked by a pack of wolves, while your other important fact is probably not as important to an ape brain – probably doesn’t mean death.

“Normalcy bias” works in a sort of opposite way – something bad may be happening, but no one wants to overreact because bad things don’t normally happen and people don’t want to face social stigma of overreacting.