Social contagion of autobiographical memories [Harris, Barnier, Sutton, Khan] (original) (raw)
Related papers
Explorations in the social contagion of memory
Memory & Cognition, 2002
Experiments 1-3 were based on a master's thesis by M.L.M. conducted under supervision of H.L.R. We thank David A. Balota and Alan J. Lambert, the other members of the committee, for their advice and comment. We also thank Four experiments examined social influence on the development of false memories. We employed the social contagion paradigm: A subject and a confederate see scenes and then later take turns recalling items from the scenes, with the confederate erroneously reporting some items that were not present in the scenes; on a final test, the subject reports these suggested items when instructed to recall only items from the scenes.The first two experiments showed that the social contagion effect persisted when subjects were explicitly warned about the possibility that confederates' responses might induce false memories and when they were tested via source-monitoring tests that explicitly gave the choice of attributing suggested items to the other person. Levels of false recall and recognition increased with the number of times the misleading information was suggested (Experiment 3), and subjects were more likely to incorporate the erroneous responses of an actual confederate on a recognition/source test as compared with those of a simulated confederate (Experiment 4). Collectively, the data support the claim that false memories may be transmitted between people and reveal critical factors that modulate the social contagion of memories.
JARMAC: Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2020
Contradictions and other changes across retellings can result from contamination from others, deception, or natural variation. In this study we used the social contagion paradigm to investigate (a) the relative frequencies and types of contradictions resulting from outside suggestion and from natural variation and (b) a baseline measure of variation in autobiographical memory accounts across retellings. Participants recalled memories of four personal events. One week later, participants and confederates alternated in describing their own and summarising each other’s autobiographical events. The confederates included a contradictory contagion detail in two of the participants’ events. The participants then individually recalled their own events. Twenty percent of participants made contradictions due to contagion, but 63% of participants made contradictions due to intrinsic variation. Accounts also exhibited other forms of variation. Concern about negative evaluation and social closeness ratings predicted contradictions due to contagion but not intrinsic variation. We discuss applications to forensic settings.
How Describing Autobiographical Events Can Affect Autobiographical Memories
Social Cognition, 2004
In this article we argue that social discourse can affect the structure and content of autobiographical memory. In making this argument, we review literature documenting the impact of social factors, including culture, social roles, and social disclosure frequency, on aspects of autobiographical memory. We also describe several social norms that govern social discourse and speculate about the effect that such norms might have on autobiographical memory. In addition, we review the mental structures and processes that might serve to mediate the relation between social discourse and autobiographical memory and offer suggestions about how both social and cognitive factors might be integrated into a common model accounting for autobiographical memory. Although autobiographical memory research had always captured the interest of a few researchers (e.g., Cason, 1932; Colegrove, 1983/1899; Waldfogel, 1948), the pace of research into this topic accelerated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Researchers who had a background in cognitive or experimental psychology published many of the important studies during this time (Linton, 1986; Neisser, 1978; Thompson, 1982; Wagenaar, 1986). Consequently, the variables of interest (e.g., delay, rehearsal) that were explored in these studies often focused on variables that are typically important to cognitive psychologists. The influence of cognitive psychology continues to manifest itself in much of the contem-555
Memory, 2020
Recalling autobiographical memories with others can influence the quality of recall, but little is known about how features of the group influence memory outcomes. In two studies, we examined how the products and processes of autobiographical recall depend on individual vs. collaborative remembering and the relationship between group members. In both studies, dyads of strangers, friends, and siblings recalled autobiographical events individually (elicitation), then either collaboratively or individually (recall). Study 1 involved typing memory narratives; Study 2 involved recalling aloud. We examined shifts in vividness, emotionality, and pronoun use within memory narratives produced by different relationship types. In Study 2, we also coded collaborative dyads' collaborative processes or communication processes. In Study 1, all relationships showed decreased positive emotion and I-pronouns and increased negative emotion within collaboratively-produced memory narratives. In Study 2, all relationships showed increased vividness, reduced emotionality and positive and negative emotion, and increased I- and we-pronouns within collaboratively-produced memory narratives. However, strangers used collaborative processes differently from friends and siblings. Some collaborative processes were associated with memory qualities. Across studies, collaboration influenced memory quality more than did relationship type, but relationship type influenced dyads’ recall dynamics. These findings indicate the complexity of social influences on memory.
People constantly talk about past experiences. Burgeoning psychologi- cal research has examined the role of communication in remembering by placing rememberers in conversational settings. In reviewing this work, we first discuss the benefits of collaborative remembering (trans- active memory and collaborative facilitation) and its costs (collaborative inhibition, information sampling biases, and audience tuning). We next examine how conversational remembering affects subsequent memory. Here, we address influences on listeners’ memory through social conta- gion, resistance to such influences, and then retrieval/reexposure effects on either speaker or listener, with a focus on retrieval-induced forget- ting. Extending the perspective beyond single interactions, we consider work that has explored how the above effects can spread across networks of several individuals. We also explore how a speaker’s motive to form a shared reality with listeners can moderate conversational effects on memory. Finally, we discuss how these various conversational effects may promote the formation of collective memories.
In daily life, emotional events are often discussed with others. The influence of these social interactions on the veracity of emotional memories has rarely been investigated. The authors (Choi, Kensinger, & Rajaram Memory and Cognition, 41, 403–415, 2013) previously demonstrated that when the categorical relatedness of information is controlled, emotional items are more accurately remembered than neutral items. The present study examined whether emotion would continue to improve the accuracy of memory when individuals discussed the emotional and neutral events with others. Two different paradigms involving social influences were used to investigate this question and compare evidence. In both paradigms, participants studied stimuli that were grouped into conceptual categories of positive (e.g., celebration), negative (e.g., funeral), or neutral (e.g., astronomy) valence. After a 48-hour delay, recognition memory was tested for studied items and categorically related lures. In the first paradigm, recognition accuracy was compared when memory was tested individually or in a collaborative triad. In the second paradigm , recognition accuracy was compared when a prior retrieval session had occurred individually or with a confederate who supplied categorically related lures. In both of these paradigms , emotional stimuli were remembered more accurately than were neutral stimuli, and this pattern was preserved when social interaction occurred. In fact, in the first paradigm, there was a trend for collaboration to increase the beneficial effect of emotion on memory accuracy, and in the second paradigm, emotional lures were significantly less susceptible to the Bsocial contagion^ effect. Together, these results demonstrate that emotional memories can be more accurate than nonemo-tional ones even when events are discussed with others (Experiment 1) and even when that discussion introduces mis-information (Experiment 2).