Social memory: individual, collective or social influence? An integrative working model

Hartmut Blank
University of Portsmouth, UK

The research domain of social memory contains three major subfields, research on (1) social cognition, (2) collective memory and (3) social influence on memory. In the first area, “social memory” is conceived as individual memory with social contents (e.g. person memory). The second area focuses on properties and contents of memories held at the level of groups or societies, often presupposing that these differ from individual memories (if the possibility of individual memories is not denied altogether). The third area covers changes in individual memory as a function of the persuasive influence of one other person (most of eyewitness suggestibility research can be construed to fall in this category) or of group pressure. I will argue that social influence on memory constitutes the essence of social memory and also can function as a theoretical link between individual and collective memory. I will present a working model of remembering that integrates perspectives of (individual) memory psychology and social psychology. This model describes remembering as being more than just retrieving information from memory. It also includes memory conversion (Tulving, 1983), the adaptation of memory information to the purposes of a memory task. Classic memory retrieval constitutes only the first stage in this process. The second involves the formation of memory beliefs, which may be converted to memory statements in a third stage. At stages 2 and 3, various forms of social influence can take place, which can be roughly group into informational (at stage 2) and normative (at stage 3) influence.