Social Elevation
Object Permanence
Out of sight, genuinely out of mind.
Grounded in the research on object permanence
the gist
In developmental psych, object permanence is knowing things still exist when you can't see them — infants develop it around 8 months. Online it's been borrowed as 'emotional object permanence': struggling to feel that people still exist when they're not in front of you.
the science
Jean Piaget tracked the original version in babies: before it develops, a hidden toy is simply gone. The pop-psych "emotional" version isn’t a clinical diagnosis — it’s a loose label, often tied to ADHD and attachment, for "out of sight, out of mind" applied to people.