To see the implications of the conceptualization for reactions to a social interaction, suppose individuals listen to a conversation between a male and a female student with the objective of forming an impression of the female. Both protagonists' contributions to the conversation are temporarily stored in the Work Space along with thoughts and feelings that are spontaneously generated in the course of listening to the conversation (e.g., feelings of enjoyment or boredom). However, only statements the female has made, which are relevant to listeners' impression of her, are transferred to Permanent Storage. Other conversation-relevant cognitions (e.g., the statements the male
makes, and the listeners' affective reactions to the conversation as a whole) are not retained. (For evidence that affective reactions are less likely to be retained in memory than semantically coded knowledge, see Robinson & Clore, 2002.)