Selective Retention Theory- Communication theories

Selective Retention Theory

The Selective Retention Theory implied that persons mostly retained only those messages which supported their beliefs and attitudes. The messages which were not consistent with their personal views and belief systems were generally not retained by individuals.

Stanley Baran, Dennis Davis, in their book, ‘Mass Communication theory: Foundations, ferment and Future’, Cengage Learning say that “Selective Retention also known as selective memory is a process by which some information is retained and stored in memory and is thus available for retrieving and other information is not (and is thus forgotten)”.  

They further expound that Selective Retention is a bias wherein the information that gets retained is more congruent with existing belief structures (and thus more likely to be recalled at a later time) as compared to the information that is less congruent with existing belief structures.