10 Explanations For Those Strange Things You Do All The Time
7. Why Can I Never Remember People’s Names?
There are few social situations worse than when you've been chatting to someone for a while and you suddenly realise that you can't for the life of you remember their name.
Forgetting someone's name makes you look pretty rude and careless but, actually, you could be the most attentive socialite in the world, sometimes your brain just can't help it.
There are a few reasons behind this social faux pas, the first of which is down to the scared little kid inside us all. For a lot of people, meeting new people can be a pretty stressful situation. Do you shake their hand? Do you kiss them on the cheek? One kiss or two? Will they like me? Am I being weird and awkward? You're so busy stressing out about how this little exchange is going to go, and about saying your own name to them, that you brain gets stage fright and simply doesn't take in their name in the first place.
Another reason is due to the relative rubbishness of the short term memory. Your short-term or "working memory" is designed to hold onto absolutely vital information. The short term memory is pretty limited, so if you're filling it with the aforementioned stress of meeting a new person, something like their name is likely to spill out in favour of trying to remember something about the interesting an important bit of current affairs that they're currently talking about.
One of the main reasons why your short term memory kicks names out so readily is because names are actually pretty meaningless. They don't tell you anything about the person you're talking to and common names in particular simply don't stand out enough for your brain to consider it as new information worth remembering.
There are all sorts of "tricks" offered up for remembering names, such as repeating it to yourself or attaching it to further information ("Mary is wearing a blue dress"). But, really, if you can't remember someone's name, just ask them what it is - chances are that they've forgotten yours too and will be relieved you brought it up.