Dare2Del

In everyday working life, employees are often confronted with a large amount of information, which can be a stress factor and hinder efficient decision-making. In order to be able to work in a goal-oriented and concentrated manner despite this flood of information, employees need to be able to focus their attention on specific tasks and block out irrelevant, disruptive or distracting information. This ability of intentional forgetting was investigated as part of the project and the results transferred to a supporting digital system.

On the basis of fundamental psychological mechanisms of intentional forgetting in everyday working life, a computer assistance system was developed as part of Dare2Del in collaboration with the Chair of Cognitive Systems (Friedrich Otto University Bamberg), which supports people in an industrial and administrative context in managing digital objects as required. By individually hiding irrelevant information and generating targeted deletion suggestions, the user’s needs can be taken into account. This can have positive consequences for employees in terms of reduced stress levels and increased efficiency when making work decisions.

Chairs involved

Chair of Work and Organizational Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Chair of Cognitive Systems, Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg

Project team

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Niessen (Chair of Work and Organizational Psychology)
Prof. Dr. Ute Schmid (Chair of Cognitive Systems)
Dr. Kyra Göbel (Chair of Work and Organizational Psychology)
Michael Siebers (Chair of Cognitive Systems)
Durgesh Nandini (Chair of Cognitive Systems)
Olivia Wilczewski (Chair of Cognitive Systems)

Publications in the project

Göbel, K., Niessen C., Seufert, S., & Schmid, U. (2022). Explanatory machine learning for justified trust in human-AI collaboration: Experiments on file deletion recommendations. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, Article 919534. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.919534
Göbel, K. (2022). Thought control in the work context. (Doctoral thesis). Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. urn:nbn:de:bvb:29-opus4-206970
Göbel, K., Hensel, L., Schultheiss, O. C., & Niessen, C. (2022). Meta-analytic evidence shows no relationship between task-based and self-report measures of thought control. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 36(3), 659-672. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3952
Göbel, K., & Niessen, C. (2021). Thought control in daily working life: How the ability to stop thoughts protects self-esteem. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35(4), 1011-1022. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3830
Niessen, C., Göbel, K., Lang, J., & Schmid, U. (2020). Stop thinking: An experience sampling study on suppressing distractive thoughts at work. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 1616. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01616
Niessen, C., Göbel, K., Siebers, M., & Schmid, U. (2020). Time to forget: Intentional forgetting in the digital world of work. Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie, 64, 30-45. https://doi.org/10.1026/0932-4089/a000308
Ellwart, T., Ulfert, A.-S., Antoni, C., Becker, J., Frings, C., Göbel, K., … …Wehrt, W. (2019). Forgetting in future work systems: System characteristics and user-related psychological consequences on emotion, cognition, and behaviors. AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems, 4, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.30844/ais-tes.v4i1.16
Siebers, M., Göbel, K., Niessen, C., & Schmid, U. (2017). Requirements for a companion system to support identifying irrelevancy. International Conference on Companion Technology (ICCT, Ulm, 2017), IEEE Press, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPANION.2017.8287076
Siebers, M., Schmid, U., Göbel, K., & Niessen, C. (2017). A psychonic approach to the design of a cognitive companion supporting intentional forgetting. Kognitive Systeme, 2017-1. https://doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/44537

Priority Programme of the German Research Foundation: Intentional Forgetting in Organizations

Both in the context of production processes and in the administration of organizations, process and routine changes are the order of the day. However, they repeatedly present organizations with challenges in coping with them. Here, the results of the SPP 1921 research provide organizations with concrete support in how knowledge, processes and routines that are no longer relevant can be intentionally forgotten in order not to make the application of the new, the relevant, more difficult or to enable it without conflict.

Eight interdisciplinary research tandems from the fields of cognitive, work and organizational psychology, cognitive science, business informatics and engineering focused their research within the SPP 1921 not only on the support and intentional design of human forgetting processes at individual and team level, but also described, recorded, systematized, formalized and investigated mechanisms and methods of how organizations and (intelligent) information systems can forget.