Conversationally Induced Forgetting: Reshaping Individual and Collective Pasts

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Memory does not merely record what occurred at a particular time in the past, but also reflects what intervenes between past and present. As a result, the frequent conversations people have with each other about a past event can radically influence the way they subsequently remember. Conversations cannot only impose new memories onto listeners, they can also reshape memories by, paradoxically, promoting forgetting, as the investigator's research has recently established. This socially induced forgetting is quite specific: The inevitable selective recounting emerging in a conversation will strengthen some memories, but will also weaken or induce forgetting, in both speaker and listener, for unmentioned memories related to what was mentioned, without having a similar effect on unmentioned, unrelated memories. The proposed research explores factors that might influence this socially induced forgetting, specifically, the position of power and expertise of the speaker, the trust the listener has in the speaker, and the goals of the conversation. By examining these factors, the investigator will specify critical conditions under which socially induced forgetting may occur and thereby further our understanding of how a memory becomes, to a substantial degree, a product of the conversations that mediate the initial experience and a subsequent act of remembrance. The expected findings will have a broad impact because they will underscore the danger of depending on the accuracy of memory and will articulate how something as commonplace as a conversation can reshape memory, not just through errors of commission, but also through errors of omission. Specifically, the expected findings will (1) add to growing reservations of the legal community about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, (2) identify how the conversations community members have about their community's past can shape its collective memory, and in turn, collective identity and collective actions, and (3) caution educators to limit their enthusiasm for distributed or collaborative learning. In each instance, the research will emphasize that the seemingly positive act of collaborative remembering will carry with it not just benefits, but also costs. In doing so, the proposed research will unravel the complex ways in which both individual and collective memories are held captive by social interactions, and help both institutions and individuals calibrate their assumptions about memory accuracy to better deal with learning and the effect that the past has on the present.