Mnemonic convergence in a social network: Collective memory and extended influence |
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Affiliation: | 1. ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia;2. Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand;3. Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia;1. Washington University in St. Louis, United States;2. Montana State University, United States;3. University of Chicago, United States;4. University of Washington, United States |
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Abstract: | Research on the social influences on remembering has focused on how people influence one another's memory through direct conversation. This project examined indirect influence, that is, the influence of those to whom one may be connected through a social network. We extend Christakis and Fowler's (2007. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. The New England Journal of Medicine, 357(4), 370–379) discovery that factors may propagate across several degrees of influence; influences of social remembering may also propagate. In a naturalistic study, we tracked weekly recollections of a narrative in a small social network. Two individuals’ mnemonic convergence could be predicted by their degree of separation. Directly and indirectly connected pairs show more convergent remembering than unconnected pairs, indicating that conversation is not the only route by which two individuals may come to hold a shared representation of the past. This propagation of memories across the links of a social network is an important means by which a group converges on a collective memory. |
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Keywords: | Mnemonic convergence Collective memory Propagation Degrees of influence Conversational remembering |
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