To make someone feel valued, flex your memory

To build a relationship with someone, it's important to let them know that you value them. There are so many ways to go about this, such as showing interest in what's going on in their lives, sacrificing your time or other resources to help them, and even offering up a little flattery.

Now a study in the British Journal of Psychology reveals another potentially powerful method — bringing up memories of details they have shared with you. Andrei I Pintea and Devin G Ray at the University of Aberdeen also found in their work that we don't automatically use this strategy as much as we could.

In the first of a series of experiments, Pintea and Ray asked 61 student participants to take on the role of an employer looking for a new office assistant. They watched a short video in which a candidate outlined her qualifications and suitability for the job. The participants were then told that this candidate would not in fact be hired, and they should give them feedback on the interview.

The participants were split into three groups for this, each with different feedback instructions. One group (the 'convey value' group) was asked to communicate that the information provided by the candidate was important to them. The second 'display memory' group was asked to convey to the candidate that they remembered them well by referencing specific details from their qualifications. The third, 'disparage value' group was asked to convey that the information that the candidate gave them was not important.

A separate group of participants then rated all of this feedback on how much it had 'conveyed value'. The results showed that the language participants chose to use in 'display memory' feedback was deemed to be just as effective as that in the feedback aiming to 'convey value'.

In a subsequent experiment, again using a simulated job interview and similar evaluations, the researchers found that the similarity in effectiveness between these two feedback groups wasn't due to a similarity in how participants chose to feedback: those asked to 'convey value' didn't tend to automatically use specific memories of the candidate to do so. However, when told to do so, they did — and this increased the raters' scores.

To explore what effects displaying memory might have in a more casual, everyday context, the researchers then asked 68 student participants to engage in what they thought was a getting-to-know-you type interaction with another person online. (Their partner was, in fact, simulated, using scripted responses.) Afterwards, they were asked to generate feedback for this partner on how they felt the chat had gone. Some were specifically told to use displays of memory of what the other person had said to show that they valued meeting them.

The researchers' analysis of the results showed that in this situation, participants who had not been explicitly told to use specific memories were more likely to do so, compared with the participants in the interview scenarios. The "generally elevated levels of memory display suggested that [it] came more naturally in a personal, informal and positive interaction than in a professional and formal communication about rejection," the pair writes.

However, they add, the feedback of participants who were explicitly told to use displays of memory were still rated as conveying more value. This shows that even in this context, when memory displays are more common, people don't always draw on their full capacity for using it when trying to convey that they value another person, they write. Why not? Because — at least in this study — the participants were too focused on "being nice". 

The work has a few limitations, most obviously the fact that the interactions were all simulated and the participants were all students, so were not representative of a general population. However, Pintea and Ray believe that the results raise "exciting possibilities" for use in the real world. The results certainly do suggest that making an effort to show that you remember details that a friend, relative, or colleague has shared with you could be a powerful way to help them to feel more valued, and make that relationship stronger.

Read the paper in full:
Pintea, A. I., & Ray, D. G. (2025). Deliberate memory display can enhance conveyed value. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12783

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