Why is it that we as humans can sit for hours trying to recall important details from our memory, but our brains have no problems recalling embarrasing or humiliating things that happened decades ago like it happened 5 minutes ago?
In: Biology
The embarrassing stories *are* the important details from a survival stand point. Humans are social animals and throughout most of our evolution we’ve lived in tribes. We are unlikely to survive on our own so one of the biggest dangers to early humans was being ostracized.
Just like pain is necessary to protect us against behavior and situations that are harmful to our bodies, shame and embarrassing memories are important because they deter us from behavior that is harmful to our social standing.
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