Remembering stories together: Social contagion and the moderating influence of disagreements in conversations

Although remembering often occurs with conversations, the effects of its pragmatics on memory are rarely examined. We studied the effect of two pragmatic factors: (1) the presence of disagreeing and (2) the level of participation in the disagreement. In the present study, each participant read a slightly different version of four stories, thereby allowing for the possibility of social contagion through the conversation. They then jointly recounted the stories. We coded for the presence or absence of disagreements, and whether a participant contributed to the disagreement. Three factors mediated social contagion: (a) the presence or absence of an overt disagreement; (b) whether or not a member of a conversational remembering participated actively in a disagreement; and (c) how well participants remembered the original material. Both the pragmatics of conversations and quality of memory are important factors moderating social contagion.     

The effects of social influence on children's memory reports: the omission and commission error asymmetry

Children in two age groups (7 vs. 12 yrs, N= 174) individually interacted with a stranger and were later interviewed about this event. Right before the interview, each child encountered the stranger once again and he engaged in a conversation where he either suggested that a (central or peripheral) detail originally present in the event had actually not been there or that an originally non-present (central or peripheral) detail had in fact been there. It was hypothesized that the two types of misinformation would result in omission and commission errors respectively. The results showed that the social influence resulted in an asymmetric effect (i.e., more commission than omission errors). Importantly, we also found that the children made more errors with respect to the peripheral detail (a suitcase), compared to the central detail (a passenger). Younger children did not make more errors (neither omission nor commission errors) than older children.     

Contiguity and the causal theory of memory

In Memory: A Philosophical Study, Bernecker argues for an account of contiguity. This Contiguity View is meant to solve relearning and prompting, wayward causation problems plaguing the causal theory of memory. I argue that Bernecker’s Contiguity View fails in this task. Contiguity is too weak to prevent relearning and too strong to allow prompting. These failures illustrate a problem inherent in accounts of memory causation. Relearning and prompting are both causal relations, wayward only with respect to our interest in specifying remembering’s requirements. Solving them requires saying more about remembering, not causation. I conclude by sketching such an account.     

从个体到集体：心理学视角下的集体记忆

基于拓展思维的社会互动主义视角, 采用流行病学研究思路, 记忆的形成与维护构成了集体记忆心理学研究的核心问题。相关研究一方面以“对话”为研究语境, 系统阐释了集体记忆形成中的社会传染、检索诱发遗忘、共享现实和网络聚合等心理机制; 另一方面, 聚焦于既存的记忆, 阐释了集体记忆有效性的心理原则, 同时, 记忆的身份关联性得到了确证。集体记忆心理学研究仍需拓展视野, 加强对文化记忆的有效性研究, 密切关注媒介技术变革引发的记忆变化, 积极推进本土化研究。     

Collective memories,emotions, and spatial tactics in social movements: The case of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

Recent studies have increasingly acknowledged the dynamic relationship between emotions and space in social movements. They, however, have seldom tied emotions and space to time when discussing activists’ emotions and their tactical choices. This paper studies the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and explores how collective memory and generational experiences—two intertwined notions of time—shaped how activists felt and how they designed and deployed a spatial tactic. The Umbrella Movement was characterized by miscellaneous emotions and intense disputes among activists regarding how to best use spatial occupation to fight for democratization before and during the struggle. Using a qualitative dataset that contains textual and interview data, I argue that while emotions and the political-cultural characteristics of contentious space were two factors in informing tactical choices, collective memory and generational experiences were key to understanding the rise of the movement and its characteristics. Experiencing different political events in their years of early adulthood, young and veteran activists felt differently in the context of 2013–2014, which led them to embrace disjunctive views on the pace, sequence, and bodily action for the same tactic of spatial occupation and dissimilar emotional management strategies. This created ongoing internal clashes before and during the movement.     

The effect of personality variables in the prediction of the execution of different prospective memory tasks in the laboratory

The study of prospective memory (ProM), the remembering of the delayed execution of intentions, has been growing in recent years, and we know quite a bit about the cognitive variables that affect it. But the performance of a task depends on personality variables as well as on cognitive ones, and the role of personality variables in ProM has only been partially studied, the results being less conclusive. We sought to address two main objectives: (1) to quantify the joint influence of cognitive and personality variables on three ProM tasks in the laboratory (two based on events and the other on time), and (2) to identify the personality profiles of those who perform well in these three ProM tasks as opposed to those who do not. The cognitive and personality variables were evaluated with two sessions of 157 participants. The 16 PF-5 was applied (Cattell, Cattell & Cattell, 1993) and other cognitive variables were measured. With the data obtained, we ran several regression analyses to determine how some cognitive variables (sustained attention, verbal fluency, interference, retrospective memory, selective attention) and personality factors (tested using the 16 PF-5) can help to explain the variance in the performance of prospective memory tasks. Our results show that the contribution of personality predictor variables is moderate and smaller than that of the cognitive variables for predicting the execution of ProM tasks in the laboratory. Furthermore the intervention of the personality variables differs depending on the ProM tasks used. Global self-control and rule-consciousness were the personality variables that contributed the most in the prediction of the scores in the ProM tasks that were used.     

A protean approach to social influence: Dark Triad personalities and social influence tactics

To avoid detection, those high on Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) may adopt a protean approach to interpersonal influence. We show the Dark Triad traits correlate with a number of unique tactics of influence (Study 1; N = 259). We show this protean approach was insensitive to differences in targets of manipulation (Study 2; N = 296). When forced to choose one tactic to solve different adaptive problems, the Dark Triad traits were correlated with unique tactical choices (Study 3; N = 268). We show these associations are generally robust to controlling for the Big Five and participants’ sex (Study 1 and 2). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for both life history and cheater-detection theories.     

From Moment to Movement: Empowerment and Resilience as a Framework for Collective Action in Hong Kong

The Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (American Journal of Community Psychology, 52, 2013, 333) suggests that a set of resilience and empowerment resources fuel both initial and sustained participation in collective action. Using the case study of a prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong, the present study focused on the subset of those resources that are relevant in ongoing collective action: efficacy, skills, and maintenance. As individuals possess varying combinations of these resources, the present study utilized latent profile analysis to test how patterns of empowerment and resilience resources influence initial and long‐term collective action. Five groups were identified: (a) Uncommitted/Uninspired; (b) Committed to Status Quo; (c) Mainstream Populist; (d) Empowered; and (e) Ambivalent. ANOVA and ANCOVA analyses found that there are significant group differences in initial and long‐term participation. Groups with higher level of resources reported greater levels of initial participation than their counterparts; however, high resource groups did not uniformly report greater levels of intention to participate in future collective action. Of the maintenance processes tested, collective identity emerged as a particularly important predictor differentiating initial and sustained participation. Findings from the present study raise questions about how individuals with multiple identities can come together and participate in collective action.     

Maternal provision of structure in a deliberate memory task in relation to their preschool children's recall

Strategic remembering emerges gradually during the preschool years. Socialization practices, specifically mother–child social interactions, might provide the foundation for the development of skills necessary for effective organization of information in memory. In the current study, 48 mothers and their 40-month-olds were engaged in the process of remembering (i.e., study and recall) categorically related picture stimuli in a laboratory context. Children’s recall was reliably predicted by the way in which mothers structured both the study and recall periods of the deliberate memory task. Specifically, maternal verbal and physical behaviors that focused on organization of items, such as sorting items into distinct groups and providing the name of a category, were most beneficial in supporting children’s memory. Moreover, some mothers employed a number of different mnemonic techniques that emphasized categorical connections among items, suggesting systematic approaches in the manner in which mothers help children to learn effective ways of remembering.     

Modeling human memory phenomena in a hybrid event memory system

Human event memory stores an individual’s personal experiences and produces their recollections with varying degrees of accuracy. To model this capacity, we recently developed a hybrid event memory system that combines aspects of the two main theories proposed in the philosophical literature. We aim to model a complete range of human event memory phenomena – successful remembering, misremembering, and confabulation – using this framework. In this paper, we review our hybrid event memory system and present empirical results from a remembering experiment we conducted using this system. The results show that our system successfully models the full range of human event memory usage and errors.     

Influence of individual differences in working memory on the continued influence effect of misinformation

ABSTRACT

Misinformation often continues to influence people’s cognition even after being retracted (the continued influence effect of misinformation, CIE). The current research aimed to investigate whether the individual differences in the central executive function of WM and updating could influence the CIE of misinformation with varying relevance. The results showed that the individual differences in central executive function could significantly affect the CIE, especially for the high-relevant misinformation. While the individual differences in the updating ability had a weaker impact on the CIE in general and only negatively related to the CIE for the low-relevant misinformation. The study extends the understanding of the relationship between individual differences and the CIE from previous studies, which is in line with the mental-model-updating hypothesis, and offers a preliminary clue for identifying the persons vulnerable to the CIE of misinformation in the real world.     

Autobiographical remembering regulates emotions: a functional perspective

Emotional deviation has been considered an essential factor in emotion regulation, in that, attempts to compensate for the deviation is reflected on cognitive processes. In the present study, we focused on autobiographical remembering and tested the functional role of memory on emotion regulation. We specifically examined the congruence effect in individuals’ subsequent memory reports after recalling emotional events. Individuals were randomly assigned to three groups to report either sadness or anger evoking events or emotionally unspecified events that they experienced in the last five years. Results supported mood-incongruence, but only for the emotional memory groups. Despite highly negative memories reported in the initial recall, individuals in anger- and sad-memory groups revealed an up-regulation trend in subsequent recall. Furthermore, sadness and anger induction affected phenomenological features of the subsequently reported memory. Overall, our findings supported for the emotion regulation function of remembering that serves counter-regulation of the negative emotion. We discuss potential mechanisms in the light of explanations by a functional approach to autobiographical memory.     

Tax communication and social influence: evidence from a British sample

An in‐depth, semi‐structured, interview study was conducted with 23 British employed and self‐employed taxpayers in various occupations. The study points to factors discouraging tax communication and proposes social norms as an alternative way of investigating social influence on taxpaying behaviour. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autobiographical memory and autobiographical narrative of a staged event: The influence of the listener

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of narration and listening conditions in autobiographical memory of a staged event. Eighty young adults were recruited for the present research. First, they were interviewed on current issues (staged event). Second, they were asked to complete a memory questionnaire about the content of the interview. Then, they were assigned to three retrieval conditions: narration to an empathic listener, narration to a detached listener, and retrieving thinking silently about the event. Finally, 1 week later, the participants were asked to complete the memory questionnaire again to assess the influence of narration and listening conditions on memory. The results show that the experimental conditions significantly influenced the memory trend for a staged event. The emphatic listening condition promoted memory significantly more than did the other two conditions. The authors interpret these results in terms of the theory of narrativization.     

青少年偏差行为的同伴选择和影响效应:基于纵向社会网络的元分析

以22篇纵向社会网络分析研究文献(30项独立样本研究,27746个被试)为对象,使用元分析技术探讨青少年偏差行为的同伴选择和同伴影响效应假设。结果发现:(1)同伴选择和同伴影响效应都显著,但同伴影响效应显著大于同伴选择效应;(2)青少年发展阶段在同伴选择和同伴影响过程中存在显著的调节效应。在同伴选择过程中,青少年早期阶段不显著,而中、晚期阶段显著;在同伴影响过程中,青少年早、中期显著,晚期阶段不显著。(3)偏差行为类型在同伴选择和同伴影响效应中的调节效应不显著。(4)网络数量在同伴影响过程中存在显著的调节效应,随着网络数量增加同伴影响效应越可能成立。结论,中晚期青少年会基于偏差行为相似性选择朋友,早中期青少年会受朋友的影响而产生偏差行为。     

Age differences in the effects of social influence on children's eyewitness performance and their metacognitive monitoring

The current work investigated the effects of social influence on children's recall accuracy and metacognitive monitoring. Two studies were conducted in which 8- and 10-year-olds were confronted with postevent information in an interview situation. An interviewer (Study 1) or a confederate (Study 2) provided postevent information with two levels of assertiveness, inducing (a) a variation of conformity pressure and (b) a variation of information credibility. Afterwards, children's confidence judgments were assessed. The results revealed significant age differences in children's ability to adequately cope with variations of social influence. Although conformity pressure was especially important for the 8-year-olds, effects of informative social influence were independent of age. However, 10-year-olds were also able to act appropriately on low credibility, thereby demonstrating a more sophisticated consideration of social influence sources. Moreover, varying assertiveness also affected the quality of children's confidence judgments by improving their metacognitive differentiation skills.     

Recognition memory in older adults: adjustment to changing contingencies.

Four older and 4 younger men were given extended exposure to a continuous-recognition memory procedure. Experimental variables included the type of stimulus (alphanumeric strings, words, or sentences), the intervals separating repeated items, gains and losses for correct and incorrect recognitions, and the extent of practice with the memory task. Signal detection analyses indicated that the older men generally were less accurate (sensitivity), particularly when the stimuli were strings, but that age differences decreased with practice. Under conditions in which the payoff matrix was neutral, the older and younger men showed equivalent rates of hits and false alarms (bias). Alteration of the matrix to require more liberal or more conservative patterns of recognition responding led to corresponding changes for men of both ages. Adjustments by the older men, however, were not as close to the bias values called for by the new matrices.