Social Influence on Memory

Human memory does not record and store information like technical devices. Rather, memory can deviate in various ways from the original experience of an event. It is fragile and potentially unreliable. Some deviations from the original experience can be attributed to forgetting or trace decay, while other deviations reflect systematic biases and distortions (e.g., McDermott & Chan, 2003; Schacter, 1999). According to a view that has been prominent since the 1970s, memories are dynamic and temporary constructions that are profoundly shaped by a host of factors like the rememberers’ cognitive schemata, attitudes, and environmental conditions (see, e.g., Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000). An important source of environmental influences is contact and exchange with other people. Surprisingly, memory researchers have, for a long time now, paid little attention to such social influences on memory, while social psychologists have almost exclusively focused on attitude, judgment, and behavior rather than memory as the object of social influence. Investigations of whether and how memories can be biased through contact with others have clearly played the second fiddle in influence research conducted in social psychology (see Bless, Strack, & Walther, 2001).Testifying to this deficit, Roediger and McDermott (2000) concluded the following in a chapter of a reference handbook on memory research: