Can’t remember the names of Beckham’s children? Then lucky you for avoiding the acquisition of trivia

The capital of New Zealand, the date of the Battle of Waterloo, the boiling point of water, the six wives of Henry VIII, the longest river in Africa, the names of David Beckham’s children, the colours of the rainbow, the last three winners of The X Factor… we all have that sort of tat cluttering up our brains, but how much of it do we actually need? Shouldn’t we be making a determined effort to forget the lot?

That’s the intriguing question raised by new research published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. People who forget pointless facts have a better memory for important things, according to researchers at the University of Illinois – which should not be surprising, but runs so counter to the Zeitgeist that most people will instinctively discard the research and its implications.

Read the whole story: The Daily Telegraph