How to trick your brain into remembering someone's name the first time you hear it
Flickr/University of Exeter
Your HR manager asks you to show your new coworker the ropes.
You take her through the office kitchen, show her where the good snacks are hidden and point out the lounge area she can use if she wants to get away from her desk.
Then you bring her over to the sales team to introduce her.
But just as you’re about to make the introduction, you realize that you can’t remember her name for the life of you.
It happens to the best of us. Why? Because our brains are hardwired to remember visual details, like what a person’s face looks like, but they aren’t trained to retain arbitrary details—like the name of the new girl or the barista that makes your coffee every single morning.
What’s in a name?
We’re all given a name at random that we are then identified by for the rest of our lives (although your parents would argue that their favorite 80’s singer had a large influence).
But since our names aren’t grounded in any specific information, our brain struggles to retain them. David Badre, an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University, explained the process to Mic. "We don’t arbitrarily stick things in file drawers in our head," he said. "For someone who really likes baseball, it’s incredibly easy for them to learn new facts about baseball.
Part of that is because you have a big existing knowledge structure, and you can use that to learn new information. But if you’re asked to memorize random things — obscure facts, for example — you don’t have the benefit of knowing all those existing structures. Names are kind of the same thing."
How to trick your brain into remembering
So your brain is not going to miraculously remember your new colleagues name on its own. Here are a few ways to trick it into storing the information in your long-term memory file cabinet.
1. Make eye contact
If you were head down in your work when you met your new co-worker or were too busy giving them the once over to make proper eye contact, you’ve got less of a shot of remembering their name. A study done on eye fixation patterns found that those who remembered names linked with faces spent more time looking into the eyes of the person they were being introduced to.
2. Repeat their name
Our brain has two different types of memory: short-term and long-term. Our short-term memory can only hold so much information, which is often why names get lost in the ether after a brief introduction. Repetition has been proven to help move facts that are stored in our short-term memory over to the more permanent memory in our brains cortex.
When you’re being introduced to someone, say their name out loud, then to yourself, and then out loud again after you’ve concluded your interaction.
3. Use visual associations
Utilize the brain’s knack for remembering visual information by associating the person you’re meeting with a distinct characteristic about them. For example, if you’ve just met your new co-worker Scott, and he’s sporting a man bun, referring to him in your mind as "Scott with the man bun" will tie his arbitrary name with a concrete feature that the brain will remember. (You’re never going to forget "Becky with the good hair" are you?)
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