Resistance to the influences of others: Limits to the formation of a collective memory through conversational remembering

Abstract

People often form collective memories by sharing their memories with others. Warnings about the reliability of one conversational participant can limit the extent to which conversations or other forms of postevent information can influence subsequent memory. Although this attenuation is consistently found for prewarnings, there are substantial reasons to suspect that, by carefully manipulating both individual characteristics of the listener in a conversation and the dynamics of the postevent conversation, one can restrict the effect even prewarnings have on the influence a speaker might have on the memory of a listener. Indeed, in situations in which a speaker contributes substantially to a conversation and the quality of memory of a listener is poor, prewarnings have the paradoxical effect of increasing the influence of the speaker on a listener's memory. Warnings may not always limit the formation of a collective memory.

Social Cognition in the Internet Age: Same As It Ever Was?

“…Moreover, both strategies have trade-offs: Prewarnings can backfire and de facto decrease accuracy when the task is difficult (Muller & Hirst, 2010), whereas postwarnings can cause incorrect rejection of old material (Echterhoff, Groll, & Hirst, 2007), throwing out the baby with the bathwater.…”

The Effect of Listening to Others Remember on Subsequent Memory: The Roles of Expertise and Trust in Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting and Social Contagion

“…Conversely, social contagion is less likely when their listeners do not trust the speaker's recollections. In experiments studying the latter effect, mistrust is often induced through a warning about the unreliability of the speaker's recollection (Boon & Baxter, 2000;Chambers & Zaragoza, 2001;Echterhoff, Hirst, & Hussy, 2005;Ecker, Lewandowsky, & Tang, 2010;McCabe & Smith, 2002;Muller & Hirst, 2010; see also Wood & Quinn, 2003).…”

Los temas de la memoria colectiva del golpe de estado de 1976 en Argentina en función de la ideología y las generaciones

“…En estudios previos se abordó el impacto que tienen las conversaciones entre los miembros de un grupo en el desarrollo de la memoria colectiva y también la incidencia de los roles conversacionales, las discusiones durante el recuerdo, la calidad de los recuerdos y la provisión de información complementaria a los participantes Muller & Camarada, 2011;Muller & Hirst, 2010. En la investigación que se informa interesó estudiar la contribución que hacen a la memoria colectiva las distintas generaciones, como así también saber cómo la ideología de los grupos incide en su conform ación.…”