magazine issue 7 2016 / Issue 31

Was that how it happened? Shaping our memory for personal experiences in conversation with others

• written by Joanne Rechdan, Melanie Sauerland, Lorraine Hope & James Ost
• edited by Emir Efendic

The process of conversational remembering exerts a powerful influence on our memory for experienced events. Remembering with others is a means through which we communicate information about ourselves, learn about others, and create and maintain social bonds (Hyman, 1994; Marsh, 2007). When individuals discuss an experienced event with others, their aim is more often to entertain and engage socially than to inform. Such retellings are told in the language of story-telling, and often contain exaggerations and distortions of the original event (Dudukovich et al., 2004). Our memory for specific episodes from the past is also selective; we remember events that promote a positive self-image (Harris, Sutton, & Barnier, 2010). Brian Williams is likely guilty of doing something most people are prone to do: in an attempt to be entertaining and engaging, he embellished story details and brought himself closer to the action. His distorted recall of an event that occurred long ago was likely due to retelling it multiple times and for various purposes and audiences over the years. If everyone’s stories were placed under the microscope in the way Williams’ has been, few would qualify for positions in news media or high office. The public should therefore be more understanding of all too human errors like Williams’, and at least consider whether such claims may reflect an honest mistake.

References

Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: Retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1063-1087.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dudukovich, N. M., Marsh, E. J., & Tversky, B. (2004). Telling a story or telling it straight: The effects of entertaining versus accurate retellings on memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 125-143.

Harris, C. B., Sutton, J., & Barnier, A. J. (2010). Autobiographical forgetting, social forgetting, and situated forgetting. In Sergio Della Sala (Eds.) Forgetting (253-284). Psychology Press.

Hellmann, J. H., Echterhoff, G., Kopietz, R., Niemeier, S., & Memon, A. (2011). Talking about visually perceived events: Communication effects on eyewitness memory. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 658-671.