Why It’s So Hard To Remember Names — & How To Get Better At It

Forgetting people's names as soon as you meet them is so predictable, yet feels impossible to fight. But, as this new video from ASAPscience explains, it's not just you being rude. Instead, there are a lot of factors converging to help you remember pretty much everything but the new guy's name. For instance, we're actually awesome at remembering faces. There's an entire area of the brain that research suggests is dedicated to that. We're also great at remembering contextual things about the people we meet. But, names are just arbitrary. For instance, although you might remember that someone works as a baker, you're much less likely to remember that his or her name is Baker.  Therefore, it's not that your memory is awful; it's just that you're busy remembering other things. So, what can you do about it? Well, you can try to add some of that missing context by associating the name with physical traits or information from your various senses — such as thinking of someone named Rose as smelling nice. Check out a few other memory-building strategies here.