Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Social Aspects of Memory

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Social Aspects of Memory

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Social Aspects of Memory
WILLIAM HIRST and CHARLES B. STONE

Abstract
No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social context in which they are
formed or later remembered. In this essay we focus on how the social context of
remembering and memorizing with others shapes the way both the speaker and listener remember the past, what we refer to as collaborative remembering. In addressing the mnemonic consequences of collaborative remembering, we discuss 1) how it
shapes what is occurrently remembered in the group and 2) how it affects both what
the speaker and listener subsequently remember. In terms of the former, we discuss
the robust collaborative inhibition literature; in terms of the latter, we discuss the
social contagion, retrieval induced-forgetting and socially shared retrieval-induced
forgetting literature. In conclusion, we highlight areas in need of future research
within the area of “social aspects of memory”: 1) whether the mnemonic effects of
collaborative remember propagate across a group, that is, to move beyond dyadic
interactions and examine larger groups; 2) examining the evolutionary advantages
of human memory being susceptible to the influence of others; and, in turn, 3) how
this mnemonic susceptibility may help foster social bonds.

SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MEMORY
No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social context in which they
are formed or later remembered. Some psychologists have tried to control for
these social effects, in the belief that, by doing so, they may better understand
the universal principles governing memory, whereas others have insisted
that the study of social aspects of memory is central to the study of memory.
This latter group has taken a wide range of approaches to the topic. Some
have investigated the way individuals remember social objects, for instance,
by studying memory for people, with the assumption being that memory for
social objects differs from memory for nonsocial objects (Srull & Wyer, 1989).
Others have explored how culturally derived schemata affect how and what
individuals both learn and remember (Bartlett, 1932; Wertsch, 2002). In a similar vein, some researchers have probed the ways institutions foster rituals
and practices that, in turn, shape memory (Olick & Robbins, 1998; Zerubavel,
2002). Although psychologists have given some attention to this last issue,
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the study of memory practices has mainly occupied the efforts of social scientists outside the field of psychology (but see Hirst et al., 2009).
We want to consider here the collaborative nature of memorizing and
remembering. Society’s use of commemorations and memorials, as well as
other social artifacts and practices, could be viewed as a collaborative effort
at remembering, that is, a collaboration between social institutions and the
general public. Our interest, however, rests more at the interpersonal level,
that is, collaborative memorizing and remembering within small groups
of individuals, or between one person and his/her audience. One might
think of this interest as concerning communicative influences on memory. A
great example of this is when remembering occurs within a conversation, as
when a family gets together and reminisces about past Christmases. Three
issues dominate current concerns about collaborative remembering, which
we frame in terms of group recounting. First, how does the occurrent act
of remembering in a group shape what is remembered by the group? This
issue fits squarely within the much larger literature on group processes
(Levine, 2013). Second, how does what one person remembers in a group
discussion, the speaker, affect her own subsequent memory? Finally, again,
to put the question in terms of a conversation, how does what speakers
say shape the subsequent memory of their listeners, the other group
members?
There are at least four reasons why collaborative remembering deserves
attention. First, sharing a jointly experienced event with others may be a
uniquely human endeavor. Although some nonhuman species communicate
information to each other, as honey bees do when they signal the location of
a food source (Gould, 1974), it is not clear that any species other than humans
intentionally communicates to one another information already known to the
recipient. Humans not only do so, but also do so routinely.
Second, group discussions about the past can serve both epistemic and
relational functions (Echterhoff, Higgins, & Levine, 2009). When serving
their epistemic function, group discussions seek to achieve a valid and
reliable understanding of the world. This understanding need not be arrived
at by simply transmitting new information, although that sometimes occurs.
Rather, in many instances, it occurs by increasing or decreasing the accessibility of already established memories or altering the content of established
memories—either intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes, one person in
a group recounting might intentionally try to persuade others of a particular
rendering of the past. The large literature on persuasion is relevant here
(Perloff, 2010; Petty & Cacioppo, 1996). However, in many acts of collective
remembering, group members are not trying to persuade one another, but
simply trying to remember the past together. In such instances, the issue
is less about what makes a message persuasive and more about how a

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message reshapes the memories of the discussants, even when there is no
conscious intention to do so. As to its relational function, group recountings
can build social bonds. For example, a fireside chat of a couple about their
early relationship will often serve as a vehicle for further intimacy.
Third, to follow up on the comments about function, collaborative remembering can also serve as a means of building a mnemonic consensus and,
through this consensus, a collective memory (Hirst & Manier, 2008). When
people experience an event, they do not always remember it in the same way.
Rather Rashomon-like, people bring to an experience their own perspectives,
and, as a result, remember the incident in their own peculiar manner (e.g.,
Hastorf & Cantril, 1954; Talarico & Moore, 2012). To the extent that the
influence speakers have on both their own memory and the memories of
their audience are similar, then discussing the past with others should lead
to shared representations of the past, what have often been called collective
memories. Just as the degree to which people can readily access autobiographical memories is thought to affect self-identity, attitudes, beliefs, and
actions, so also might a collective memory influence collective identity,
attitudes, beliefs, and actions (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011). Part
of the reason why discussions about the past may create a sense of intimacy
among participants is because they help the discussants form a collective
identity.
Fourth, and finally, the study of group recounting fits well with recent
philosophical efforts to extend the mind beyond the surface of the skin (Clark
& Chalmers, 1998; Robbins & Aydede, 2009). According to this philosophical
argument, social artifacts, institutions, and tools are not external to the mind,
but become an integral aspect of the mind, needed for the mind to achieve
its full capacity. One does not have to accept the argument for an extended
mind in full to agree with a basic lesson it imparts: That human behavior is a
consequence of a tight, inseparable interaction between external influences
and internal mechanisms (Sutton, Harris, Keil, & Barnier, 2010) and that the
study of cognition should focus on this interaction rather than exclusively
on internal mechanisms.
COLLABORATIVE REMEMBERING AND SELECTIVITY
Let us turn to the first issue dominating discussions of collaborative
remembering: What does the collaborating group remember? People rarely
remember all that they are capable of remembering when remembering
in a group (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010). Although a group might
remember more than any one individual remembering alone, the group
does not remember as much as the sum of what each group member is
capable of recollecting on her own, a phenomenon known as collaborative

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inhibition (Weldon, 2001). This selective remembering can occur for a variety of reasons. First, people might tune what they say to their audience,
recalling some memories, presumably because they believe that these
are the ones their audience wants to hear, while remaining silent about
others (Echterhoff et al., 2009). Second, in some instances, conversational
participants may be part of a transactive memory system, which consists
of a group of individuals in which its members specialize in memorizing
and remembering different types of material (Wegner, Erber, & Raymond,
1991). For example, a couple might constitute a transactive memory system, with one member specializing in remembering the financial details,
while the other remembers social details. Third, people have a tendency
to remember what others already know rather than their uniquely held
memories (Wittenbaum & Park, 2001). The reason for this information sampling bias is statistical rather than profoundly psychological: If all memories
can be recalled equally, then there is a greater probability for a shared
rather than an unshared memory to be recalled by at least one group
member (Stasser & Titus, 1987). Fourth, there may be social loafing, that
is, some group members may remain silent, while others carry the burden
of remembering. Finally, and importantly, the way one group member
retrieves the to-be-remembered material may be effective for that group
member but not for other group members. Consequently, the retrieval
strategy pursued by one group member may block the most effective
means of retrieval for the other group members (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin,
2010). Collaborative inhibition may then be an inevitable consequence
of joint remembering when people have differing perspectives on the
past.
EFFECTS OF SELECTIVE GROUP RECOUNTINGS ON SUBSEQUENT REMEMBERING
As to the second and third issues dominating discussions of collaboration,
obviously, the selectivity of group recountings can reshape the subsequent
memories of both speakers and listeners in the group discussion by reinforcing selected memories (Roediger, Zaromb, & Butler, 2009). However, as
Hirst and Echterhoff (2012) have argued, group discussions about the past
can reshape the memories of their participants in other ways as well, specifically, through social contagion and induced forgetting.
SOCIAL CONTAGION
Since the groundbreaking work by Loftus (2005), psychologists have known
that exposure to misleading material can implant memories. In the earliest experiments, the misinformation was presented without, in most cases,
mentioning a social source. For instance, participants saw a traffic accident

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depicted in a sequence of slides and then read a narrative account of the slide
show. In the slide show, there might be a stop sign at the intersection where
the accident occurred; the narrative would mention a yield sign. About 30%
of the time, participants in such experiments falsely recognized the misleading information, recalling, following up on our example, that there was a
yield sign instead of a stop sign (see also Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, &
Garry, 2004).
More recent research has examined situations that clearly involve a social
source, including a speaker in a conversation (Meade & Roediger, 2002). In
recognition of this social character, researchers often refer to the implantation of memories as social contagion (Meade & Roediger, 2002). Critically for
the purposes here, social contagion is greater when the source imparting the
misinformation is a person as opposed to a written document, even if the participant in the experiment is told the document reflects what another person
recalled (Meade & Roediger, 2002). Moreover, the social relationship between
the source of the misinformation and the audience matters: For instance,
the more the listener trusts the speaker, the greater the level of social contagion; and, in reverse, the less the listener trusts the speaker,the lower the
level of social contagion (Dodd & Bradshaw, 1980; Echterhoff, Hirst, & Hussy,
2005).
INDUCED FORGETTING
While our understanding of social contagion rests on almost four decades
of research, we are only beginning to understand how group recountings, in
particular, their selectivity, might induce forgetting. Remaining silent about
a memory may lead to its decay overtime, but when silence occurs in the
midst of acts of remembering, selective retrieval can induce forgetting for
these silent but related memories (see Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Stone,
Coman, Brown, Koppel, & Hirst, 2012). Critically, this retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) holds for those selectively communicating the past to others
(a speaker in a conversation, for instance) and for those attending to the selective remembering (the listener), with the latter referred to as socially shared
retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF).
For instance, Cuc, Koppel, and Hirst (2007) asked participants to read a
story about a day in the life of John, who went to Coney Island (one episode),
where he swam, rode a roller coaster, and ate a hot dog, and then went to a
dinner party (a different episode), where he watched football, among other
things. In a joint recollection of the story with another participant, the event
of eating a hot dog might be remembered, for instance, but not the event of
riding a roller coaster or any event associated with the dinner party. Cuc et al.
found that in a final individual recall test, participants were more likely to

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forget unmentioned items from the original story when they were related to
what was remembered in the group recounting (e.g., riding the roller coaster)
compared to unmentioned, unrelated items (e.g., watching football), even
when the items were equated for memorability. That is, they observed similar
RIF in both speakers and listeners.
Hirst & Echterhoff (2012) have argued that SS-RIF occurs because listeners
concurrently, albeit covertly, retrieve with the speaker. With this concurrent,
covert retrieval, the listener will be in a situation similar to that of the speaker.
SS-RIF differs from the retrieval-induced forgetting observed in a speaker or
an individual remembering on his own in that SS-RIF is optional. Listeners
do not have to concurrently retrieve along with a speaker, whereas speakers
are, by definition, retrieving. Inasmuch as retrieval is an effortful activity, the
findings that listeners do, in many instances, concurrently retrieve is noteworthy.
SS-RIF has also been observed outside the laboratory. For instance,
Stone, Luminet, Klein, Licata, and Hirst (2014) examined the memories of
French-speaking Belgians’ (some Belgians speak Dutch rather than French)
of critical aspects of currently politically charged, nationally relevant issues.
They found SS-RIF for these critical details for those participants who
listened to a televised broadcast of a speech by the Belgian King. Those
participants who attended to the speech had more trouble remembering
details related to those raised by the King than details about undiscussed
topical issues. Alternatively,those who did not attend to the speech showed
no difference in accessing details about both the discussed and undiscussed
issues.
What are the next steps in the study of communicative influences on
subsequent memory, particularly the relatively unexplored socially shared
retrieval-induced forgetting? Researchers might investigate in more detail
how these communicative influences differ for speakers and listeners. For
instance, although induced forgetting occurs for both speakers and listeners
when they concurrently retrieve, the retrieval conditions differ. Speakers
must freely recall a memory, whereas listeners need only recognize it.
The implication of this difference is not fully understood, but it no doubt
has consequences. Researchers might also try to better understand the
conditions under which listeners make the effort to concurrently retrieve.
Koppel, Wohl, Meksin, and Hirst (2014) suggested that such retrieval may
occur when there is, if even at a minimal level, mistrust between speaker
and listener. Echterhoff et al.’s (2009) work on the saying-is-believing
effect suggests that the need to create a shared reality with each other
might be relevant. At present, though, not enough is known about the
communicative influences on memory to offer a general model of the
phenomena.

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MOVING BEYOND DYADIC INTERACTIONS
Most of the research to date has examined collaborative remembering in
dyads, that is, two people. But what about larger groups? As noted earlier,
one reason for studying communicative influences on memory is that they
may have the potential to promote the formation of a collective memory.
Rehearsal, social contagion, and induced forgetting will, respectively,
reinforce, mislead, and lower mnemonic accessibility in both speaker and
listener, thereby increasing mnemonic consensus between the two. However,
how do communicative influences on memory reach beyond their immediate effects on the participants in a conversation? Such influences would be
more pertinent to the study of collective memory if they propagated across a
large social network. Work on obesity and social networks, for instance, has
shown that it is not just that an obese friend can influence your weight, but
also your obese friend can influence friends of yours with whom he has no
connection (Christakis & Fowler, 2007). The influence propagates. Coman
and Hirst (2012) recently studied the propagation of rehearsal and SS-RIF
effects on memory across a sequence of two social interactions, showing
propagation in some, but not all situations. Coman, Kolling, Lewis, and
Hirst (2012) explored larger networks using agent-based modeling, which
assumes that emergent properties of a network can be traced to “local”
influences (Epstein, 2006). As these “local” influences propagate through
the network, the assumption is, they can begin to affect the network as a
whole. Coman et al.’s model suggested that communicative influences do
propagate, at least to some extent, and can promote mnemonic consensus
across a network. Researchers are only beginning to examine the extent to
which communicative influences propagate across a network, the degree
to which any limit on propagation might affect mnemonic convergence,
and finally, how answers to these issues might vary with network topology.
Both experimental work and agent-based modeling might prove useful in
addressing these issues.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Why is human memory susceptible to the influences of others? Why can’t it
be more like a computer’s memory, in which memories are left unaltered once
encoded? To some extent, the answer lies in the fact that humans are seemingly designed to communicate their memories to others, whereas computers
are not. However, this is only a partial answer. A fuller answer rests with
the possibility that human memory takes advantage of its communicative
function. Several evolutionary psychologists have stressed that human intelligence is a direct result of humanity’s need to live in increasingly complex
social settings (e.g., Humphrey, 1976). The malleability of memory—that is,

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the ability of a speaker to reshape the memory of the listener—may have been
another adaptation to the social environment humans increasingly found
themselves occupying. With their capacity to promote the formation of a collective memory, communicative influences on memory seem ideally suited
as a means to bring, at least, small groups closer together. Of course, at times,
a shared memory of the past can lead to animosity among groups. Our point
is that it may also play a critical role in cementing the social bonds within
a group. Although these speculations seem reasonable, we know surprisingly little about the role rehearsal, social contagion, and induced forgetting
play when nonhuman species interact socially. Moreover, although the fostering of social bonds has received considerable attention from psychologists
(e.g., Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002), the role of memory, and, in
particular, the relation among communicative influence, memory, and sociality has remained heretofore unexplored. Finally, if communicative influences
on memory represent distinctively human phenomena, we know little about
the way in which the human brain mediates these effects (but see Edelson,
Sharot, Dolan, & Dudai, 2011). These topics should receive greater prominence in future memory research than they have in the past.

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FURTHER READING
Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., & Levine, J. M. (2009). Shared reality: Experiencing
commonality with others’ inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 4, 496–521. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01161.x
Hirst, W., & Echterhoff, G. (2012). Remembering in conversations: The social sharing
and reshaping of memories. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 55–79. doi:10.1146/
annurev-psych-120710-100340
Hirst, W., & Manier, D. (2008). Towards a psychology of collective memory. Memory,
17, 183–200. doi:10.1080/09658210701811912
Rajaram, S., & Pereira-Pasarin, L. P. (2010). Collaborative memory: Cognitive
research and theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 649–663. doi:10.1177/
1745691610388763

WILLIAM HIRST SHORT BIOGRAPHY
William Hirst is a Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social
Research. His graduate training was at Cornell University, receiving his
PhD in 1976. He taught at Rockefeller University, Princeton University,
and Cornell University before coming to the New School. He has edited
four volumes and published over 120 articles on topics as wide ranging as
attention, amnesia, and social aspects of collective and individual memory.
His research has received support from NIH, NSF, and the McDonnell and
Russell Sage Foundations. He also directed a program to revive psychology
in Romania after the fall of communism. He is currently working on a book
on collective memory.
CHARLES B. STONE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Charles B. Stone is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York
(CUNY). His graduate training was at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive
Science in Sydney, Australia, receiving his PhD in 2011. Before coming to
John Jay, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Université catholique
de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. He is an editorial board member
for the journal, Memory Studies and was recently a coguest editor of a special
issue in Memory Studies which focused on an interdisciplinary approach to
the study of how individuals and groups remember the past.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

RELATED ESSAYS
The Inherence Heuristic: Generating Everyday Explanations (Psychology),
Andrei Cimpian
Implicit Memory (Psychology), Dawn M. McBride
Memory Gaps and Memory Errors (Psychology), Jeffrey S. Neuschatz et al.
Attention and Perception (Psychology), Ronald A. Rensink



Social Aspects of Memory
WILLIAM HIRST and CHARLES B. STONE

Abstract
No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social context in which they are
formed or later remembered. In this essay we focus on how the social context of
remembering and memorizing with others shapes the way both the speaker and listener remember the past, what we refer to as collaborative remembering. In addressing the mnemonic consequences of collaborative remembering, we discuss 1) how it
shapes what is occurrently remembered in the group and 2) how it affects both what
the speaker and listener subsequently remember. In terms of the former, we discuss
the robust collaborative inhibition literature; in terms of the latter, we discuss the
social contagion, retrieval induced-forgetting and socially shared retrieval-induced
forgetting literature. In conclusion, we highlight areas in need of future research
within the area of “social aspects of memory”: 1) whether the mnemonic effects of
collaborative remember propagate across a group, that is, to move beyond dyadic
interactions and examine larger groups; 2) examining the evolutionary advantages
of human memory being susceptible to the influence of others; and, in turn, 3) how
this mnemonic susceptibility may help foster social bonds.

SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MEMORY
No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social context in which they
are formed or later remembered. Some psychologists have tried to control for
these social effects, in the belief that, by doing so, they may better understand
the universal principles governing memory, whereas others have insisted
that the study of social aspects of memory is central to the study of memory.
This latter group has taken a wide range of approaches to the topic. Some
have investigated the way individuals remember social objects, for instance,
by studying memory for people, with the assumption being that memory for
social objects differs from memory for nonsocial objects (Srull & Wyer, 1989).
Others have explored how culturally derived schemata affect how and what
individuals both learn and remember (Bartlett, 1932; Wertsch, 2002). In a similar vein, some researchers have probed the ways institutions foster rituals
and practices that, in turn, shape memory (Olick & Robbins, 1998; Zerubavel,
2002). Although psychologists have given some attention to this last issue,
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the study of memory practices has mainly occupied the efforts of social scientists outside the field of psychology (but see Hirst et al., 2009).
We want to consider here the collaborative nature of memorizing and
remembering. Society’s use of commemorations and memorials, as well as
other social artifacts and practices, could be viewed as a collaborative effort
at remembering, that is, a collaboration between social institutions and the
general public. Our interest, however, rests more at the interpersonal level,
that is, collaborative memorizing and remembering within small groups
of individuals, or between one person and his/her audience. One might
think of this interest as concerning communicative influences on memory. A
great example of this is when remembering occurs within a conversation, as
when a family gets together and reminisces about past Christmases. Three
issues dominate current concerns about collaborative remembering, which
we frame in terms of group recounting. First, how does the occurrent act
of remembering in a group shape what is remembered by the group? This
issue fits squarely within the much larger literature on group processes
(Levine, 2013). Second, how does what one person remembers in a group
discussion, the speaker, affect her own subsequent memory? Finally, again,
to put the question in terms of a conversation, how does what speakers
say shape the subsequent memory of their listeners, the other group
members?
There are at least four reasons why collaborative remembering deserves
attention. First, sharing a jointly experienced event with others may be a
uniquely human endeavor. Although some nonhuman species communicate
information to each other, as honey bees do when they signal the location of
a food source (Gould, 1974), it is not clear that any species other than humans
intentionally communicates to one another information already known to the
recipient. Humans not only do so, but also do so routinely.
Second, group discussions about the past can serve both epistemic and
relational functions (Echterhoff, Higgins, & Levine, 2009). When serving
their epistemic function, group discussions seek to achieve a valid and
reliable understanding of the world. This understanding need not be arrived
at by simply transmitting new information, although that sometimes occurs.
Rather, in many instances, it occurs by increasing or decreasing the accessibility of already established memories or altering the content of established
memories—either intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes, one person in
a group recounting might intentionally try to persuade others of a particular
rendering of the past. The large literature on persuasion is relevant here
(Perloff, 2010; Petty & Cacioppo, 1996). However, in many acts of collective
remembering, group members are not trying to persuade one another, but
simply trying to remember the past together. In such instances, the issue
is less about what makes a message persuasive and more about how a

Social Aspects of Memory

3

message reshapes the memories of the discussants, even when there is no
conscious intention to do so. As to its relational function, group recountings
can build social bonds. For example, a fireside chat of a couple about their
early relationship will often serve as a vehicle for further intimacy.
Third, to follow up on the comments about function, collaborative remembering can also serve as a means of building a mnemonic consensus and,
through this consensus, a collective memory (Hirst & Manier, 2008). When
people experience an event, they do not always remember it in the same way.
Rather Rashomon-like, people bring to an experience their own perspectives,
and, as a result, remember the incident in their own peculiar manner (e.g.,
Hastorf & Cantril, 1954; Talarico & Moore, 2012). To the extent that the
influence speakers have on both their own memory and the memories of
their audience are similar, then discussing the past with others should lead
to shared representations of the past, what have often been called collective
memories. Just as the degree to which people can readily access autobiographical memories is thought to affect self-identity, attitudes, beliefs, and
actions, so also might a collective memory influence collective identity,
attitudes, beliefs, and actions (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011). Part
of the reason why discussions about the past may create a sense of intimacy
among participants is because they help the discussants form a collective
identity.
Fourth, and finally, the study of group recounting fits well with recent
philosophical efforts to extend the mind beyond the surface of the skin (Clark
& Chalmers, 1998; Robbins & Aydede, 2009). According to this philosophical
argument, social artifacts, institutions, and tools are not external to the mind,
but become an integral aspect of the mind, needed for the mind to achieve
its full capacity. One does not have to accept the argument for an extended
mind in full to agree with a basic lesson it imparts: That human behavior is a
consequence of a tight, inseparable interaction between external influences
and internal mechanisms (Sutton, Harris, Keil, & Barnier, 2010) and that the
study of cognition should focus on this interaction rather than exclusively
on internal mechanisms.
COLLABORATIVE REMEMBERING AND SELECTIVITY
Let us turn to the first issue dominating discussions of collaborative
remembering: What does the collaborating group remember? People rarely
remember all that they are capable of remembering when remembering
in a group (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010). Although a group might
remember more than any one individual remembering alone, the group
does not remember as much as the sum of what each group member is
capable of recollecting on her own, a phenomenon known as collaborative

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inhibition (Weldon, 2001). This selective remembering can occur for a variety of reasons. First, people might tune what they say to their audience,
recalling some memories, presumably because they believe that these
are the ones their audience wants to hear, while remaining silent about
others (Echterhoff et al., 2009). Second, in some instances, conversational
participants may be part of a transactive memory system, which consists
of a group of individuals in which its members specialize in memorizing
and remembering different types of material (Wegner, Erber, & Raymond,
1991). For example, a couple might constitute a transactive memory system, with one member specializing in remembering the financial details,
while the other remembers social details. Third, people have a tendency
to remember what others already know rather than their uniquely held
memories (Wittenbaum & Park, 2001). The reason for this information sampling bias is statistical rather than profoundly psychological: If all memories
can be recalled equally, then there is a greater probability for a shared
rather than an unshared memory to be recalled by at least one group
member (Stasser & Titus, 1987). Fourth, there may be social loafing, that
is, some group members may remain silent, while others carry the burden
of remembering. Finally, and importantly, the way one group member
retrieves the to-be-remembered material may be effective for that group
member but not for other group members. Consequently, the retrieval
strategy pursued by one group member may block the most effective
means of retrieval for the other group members (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin,
2010). Collaborative inhibition may then be an inevitable consequence
of joint remembering when people have differing perspectives on the
past.
EFFECTS OF SELECTIVE GROUP RECOUNTINGS ON SUBSEQUENT REMEMBERING
As to the second and third issues dominating discussions of collaboration,
obviously, the selectivity of group recountings can reshape the subsequent
memories of both speakers and listeners in the group discussion by reinforcing selected memories (Roediger, Zaromb, & Butler, 2009). However, as
Hirst and Echterhoff (2012) have argued, group discussions about the past
can reshape the memories of their participants in other ways as well, specifically, through social contagion and induced forgetting.
SOCIAL CONTAGION
Since the groundbreaking work by Loftus (2005), psychologists have known
that exposure to misleading material can implant memories. In the earliest experiments, the misinformation was presented without, in most cases,
mentioning a social source. For instance, participants saw a traffic accident

Social Aspects of Memory

5

depicted in a sequence of slides and then read a narrative account of the slide
show. In the slide show, there might be a stop sign at the intersection where
the accident occurred; the narrative would mention a yield sign. About 30%
of the time, participants in such experiments falsely recognized the misleading information, recalling, following up on our example, that there was a
yield sign instead of a stop sign (see also Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, &
Garry, 2004).
More recent research has examined situations that clearly involve a social
source, including a speaker in a conversation (Meade & Roediger, 2002). In
recognition of this social character, researchers often refer to the implantation of memories as social contagion (Meade & Roediger, 2002). Critically for
the purposes here, social contagion is greater when the source imparting the
misinformation is a person as opposed to a written document, even if the participant in the experiment is told the document reflects what another person
recalled (Meade & Roediger, 2002). Moreover, the social relationship between
the source of the misinformation and the audience matters: For instance,
the more the listener trusts the speaker, the greater the level of social contagion; and, in reverse, the less the listener trusts the speaker,the lower the
level of social contagion (Dodd & Bradshaw, 1980; Echterhoff, Hirst, & Hussy,
2005).
INDUCED FORGETTING
While our understanding of social contagion rests on almost four decades
of research, we are only beginning to understand how group recountings, in
particular, their selectivity, might induce forgetting. Remaining silent about
a memory may lead to its decay overtime, but when silence occurs in the
midst of acts of remembering, selective retrieval can induce forgetting for
these silent but related memories (see Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Stone,
Coman, Brown, Koppel, & Hirst, 2012). Critically, this retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) holds for those selectively communicating the past to others
(a speaker in a conversation, for instance) and for those attending to the selective remembering (the listener), with the latter referred to as socially shared
retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF).
For instance, Cuc, Koppel, and Hirst (2007) asked participants to read a
story about a day in the life of John, who went to Coney Island (one episode),
where he swam, rode a roller coaster, and ate a hot dog, and then went to a
dinner party (a different episode), where he watched football, among other
things. In a joint recollection of the story with another participant, the event
of eating a hot dog might be remembered, for instance, but not the event of
riding a roller coaster or any event associated with the dinner party. Cuc et al.
found that in a final individual recall test, participants were more likely to

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

forget unmentioned items from the original story when they were related to
what was remembered in the group recounting (e.g., riding the roller coaster)
compared to unmentioned, unrelated items (e.g., watching football), even
when the items were equated for memorability. That is, they observed similar
RIF in both speakers and listeners.
Hirst & Echterhoff (2012) have argued that SS-RIF occurs because listeners
concurrently, albeit covertly, retrieve with the speaker. With this concurrent,
covert retrieval, the listener will be in a situation similar to that of the speaker.
SS-RIF differs from the retrieval-induced forgetting observed in a speaker or
an individual remembering on his own in that SS-RIF is optional. Listeners
do not have to concurrently retrieve along with a speaker, whereas speakers
are, by definition, retrieving. Inasmuch as retrieval is an effortful activity, the
findings that listeners do, in many instances, concurrently retrieve is noteworthy.
SS-RIF has also been observed outside the laboratory. For instance,
Stone, Luminet, Klein, Licata, and Hirst (2014) examined the memories of
French-speaking Belgians’ (some Belgians speak Dutch rather than French)
of critical aspects of currently politically charged, nationally relevant issues.
They found SS-RIF for these critical details for those participants who
listened to a televised broadcast of a speech by the Belgian King. Those
participants who attended to the speech had more trouble remembering
details related to those raised by the King than details about undiscussed
topical issues. Alternatively,those who did not attend to the speech showed
no difference in accessing details about both the discussed and undiscussed
issues.
What are the next steps in the study of communicative influences on
subsequent memory, particularly the relatively unexplored socially shared
retrieval-induced forgetting? Researchers might investigate in more detail
how these communicative influences differ for speakers and listeners. For
instance, although induced forgetting occurs for both speakers and listeners
when they concurrently retrieve, the retrieval conditions differ. Speakers
must freely recall a memory, whereas listeners need only recognize it.
The implication of this difference is not fully understood, but it no doubt
has consequences. Researchers might also try to better understand the
conditions under which listeners make the effort to concurrently retrieve.
Koppel, Wohl, Meksin, and Hirst (2014) suggested that such retrieval may
occur when there is, if even at a minimal level, mistrust between speaker
and listener. Echterhoff et al.’s (2009) work on the saying-is-believing
effect suggests that the need to create a shared reality with each other
might be relevant. At present, though, not enough is known about the
communicative influences on memory to offer a general model of the
phenomena.

Social Aspects of Memory

7

MOVING BEYOND DYADIC INTERACTIONS
Most of the research to date has examined collaborative remembering in
dyads, that is, two people. But what about larger groups? As noted earlier,
one reason for studying communicative influences on memory is that they
may have the potential to promote the formation of a collective memory.
Rehearsal, social contagion, and induced forgetting will, respectively,
reinforce, mislead, and lower mnemonic accessibility in both speaker and
listener, thereby increasing mnemonic consensus between the two. However,
how do communicative influences on memory reach beyond their immediate effects on the participants in a conversation? Such influences would be
more pertinent to the study of collective memory if they propagated across a
large social network. Work on obesity and social networks, for instance, has
shown that it is not just that an obese friend can influence your weight, but
also your obese friend can influence friends of yours with whom he has no
connection (Christakis & Fowler, 2007). The influence propagates. Coman
and Hirst (2012) recently studied the propagation of rehearsal and SS-RIF
effects on memory across a sequence of two social interactions, showing
propagation in some, but not all situations. Coman, Kolling, Lewis, and
Hirst (2012) explored larger networks using agent-based modeling, which
assumes that emergent properties of a network can be traced to “local”
influences (Epstein, 2006). As these “local” influences propagate through
the network, the assumption is, they can begin to affect the network as a
whole. Coman et al.’s model suggested that communicative influences do
propagate, at least to some extent, and can promote mnemonic consensus
across a network. Researchers are only beginning to examine the extent to
which communicative influences propagate across a network, the degree
to which any limit on propagation might affect mnemonic convergence,
and finally, how answers to these issues might vary with network topology.
Both experimental work and agent-based modeling might prove useful in
addressing these issues.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Why is human memory susceptible to the influences of others? Why can’t it
be more like a computer’s memory, in which memories are left unaltered once
encoded? To some extent, the answer lies in the fact that humans are seemingly designed to communicate their memories to others, whereas computers
are not. However, this is only a partial answer. A fuller answer rests with
the possibility that human memory takes advantage of its communicative
function. Several evolutionary psychologists have stressed that human intelligence is a direct result of humanity’s need to live in increasingly complex
social settings (e.g., Humphrey, 1976). The malleability of memory—that is,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the ability of a speaker to reshape the memory of the listener—may have been
another adaptation to the social environment humans increasingly found
themselves occupying. With their capacity to promote the formation of a collective memory, communicative influences on memory seem ideally suited
as a means to bring, at least, small groups closer together. Of course, at times,
a shared memory of the past can lead to animosity among groups. Our point
is that it may also play a critical role in cementing the social bonds within
a group. Although these speculations seem reasonable, we know surprisingly little about the role rehearsal, social contagion, and induced forgetting
play when nonhuman species interact socially. Moreover, although the fostering of social bonds has received considerable attention from psychologists
(e.g., Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002), the role of memory, and, in
particular, the relation among communicative influence, memory, and sociality has remained heretofore unexplored. Finally, if communicative influences
on memory represent distinctively human phenomena, we know little about
the way in which the human brain mediates these effects (but see Edelson,
Sharot, Dolan, & Dudai, 2011). These topics should receive greater prominence in future memory research than they have in the past.

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FURTHER READING
Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., & Levine, J. M. (2009). Shared reality: Experiencing
commonality with others’ inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 4, 496–521. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01161.x
Hirst, W., & Echterhoff, G. (2012). Remembering in conversations: The social sharing
and reshaping of memories. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 55–79. doi:10.1146/
annurev-psych-120710-100340
Hirst, W., & Manier, D. (2008). Towards a psychology of collective memory. Memory,
17, 183–200. doi:10.1080/09658210701811912
Rajaram, S., & Pereira-Pasarin, L. P. (2010). Collaborative memory: Cognitive
research and theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 649–663. doi:10.1177/
1745691610388763

WILLIAM HIRST SHORT BIOGRAPHY
William Hirst is a Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social
Research. His graduate training was at Cornell University, receiving his
PhD in 1976. He taught at Rockefeller University, Princeton University,
and Cornell University before coming to the New School. He has edited
four volumes and published over 120 articles on topics as wide ranging as
attention, amnesia, and social aspects of collective and individual memory.
His research has received support from NIH, NSF, and the McDonnell and
Russell Sage Foundations. He also directed a program to revive psychology
in Romania after the fall of communism. He is currently working on a book
on collective memory.
CHARLES B. STONE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Charles B. Stone is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York
(CUNY). His graduate training was at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive
Science in Sydney, Australia, receiving his PhD in 2011. Before coming to
John Jay, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Université catholique
de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. He is an editorial board member
for the journal, Memory Studies and was recently a coguest editor of a special
issue in Memory Studies which focused on an interdisciplinary approach to
the study of how individuals and groups remember the past.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

RELATED ESSAYS
The Inherence Heuristic: Generating Everyday Explanations (Psychology),
Andrei Cimpian
Implicit Memory (Psychology), Dawn M. McBride
Memory Gaps and Memory Errors (Psychology), Jeffrey S. Neuschatz et al.
Attention and Perception (Psychology), Ronald A. Rensink