science

Selective omission

Selective omission is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Selective omission rather than just read about it. In short: Selective omission is a memory bias. In collective memory, it is a bias where a group (state, media, public opinion) makes efforts to forget and not re-introduce traumatic or unwanted memories.

Key takeaways

Selective omission belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Selective omission to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Selective omission from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Selective omission is a memory bias. In collective memory, it is a bias where a group (state, media, public opinion) makes efforts to forget and not re-introduce traumatic or unwanted memories. This expression is often used for post-war rewriting of history in a more coherent way according to local stereotypes and moral values, which may include denying war atrocities. The viewer may forget their own side's atrocities or suggest they were done by the opposite side, while the other side's atrocities are freely exposed. On the winning side, it is closely related to the concept of fair quest and just war, which claim to kill only warriors in fights. When remembering things from one's past, it is easier to remember events that are tied to a major life-changing event (e.g. flashbulb memories. Research done by Norman Brown, Peter Lee, and others, tested the hypothesis that memory is organized based on life-changing events by having participants recall memories with historically defined autobiographical periods (H-DAPs; i.e. "during the war", "after the earthquake"). The results found that participants that lived in war zones or places where a natural disaster such as a tsunami had occurred typically would refer to their H-DAPs to date personal events, while New Yorkers almost never mentioned the attacks of 9/11. The researchers believed this was happening because even though they remembered the attacks of 9/11, they had very little direct effect on their everyday lives. They concluded that people use historical events to date their memories; however, what events they use and how they choose to use them remains to be determined.

See also Motivated forgetting – Psychological defense mechanism Pact of Forgetting – Political decision in Spain to intentionally ignore the political legacy of Franco Politics of memory – Political influence on collective memory Colonial amnesia – Concept in postcolonial studies (the phenomenon of forgetting colonial history or remembering it in certain ways that erase the history of the colonized people). Truth-seeking – Restorative justice process Holocaust denial – Antisemitic conspiracy theory Japanese history textbook controversies – Controversy over historiography in Japan Nanking Massacre denial – Denial of the 1937 massacre by JapanPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets

References

Sources Pennebaker, James W.; Páez, Darío; Rimé, Bernard (1997). Collective memory of political events: social psychological perspectives. Routledge. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-8058-2182-6. Brown, N., Lee, P., Krslak, M., Conrad, F., Hansen, T., Havelka, J., and Reddon, R., (2009). Living in History: How War, Terrorism, and Natural Disaster Affect the Organization of Autobiographical Memory. Psychological Science. 20: 399-405. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02307.x

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Selective omission

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Selective omission claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Selective omission before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Selective omission ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Selective omission

In research: Selective omission appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Selective omission in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Selective omission is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cognitive biases, Historical negationism, Memory biases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Selective omission outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Selective omission in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Selective omission means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Selective omission out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Selective omission in simple terms?

Selective omission is a memory bias. In collective memory, it is a bias where a group (state, media, public opinion) makes efforts to forget and not re-introduce traumatic or unwanted memories.

Why does Selective omission matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Selective omission?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Selective omission.