ISSN : 1226-9654
Remembering has been a traditional topic of cognitive research since the foundation of psychology, but it was only over few decades that social aspects of episodic memory have taken an increasing amount of interest. Social aspects of memory can be easily observed in everyday events of remembering, as people often have their memories influenced and updated while interacting with others. We focus on this normative and informational conforming processes of memory, so called memory conformity, introducing previous studies about memory conformity in social settings. Normative influence is caused by social reinforcement learning while informational influence is triggered by urge of achieving high memory accuracy. In our review, moderators of memory conformity are discussed as well as individual differences which can affect the two conforming processes. Noticeable neuroscience experiments of memory conformity researches are also discussed. This review will provide an overall insight into how social interaction can alter memories and on delineating the various psychological and neural underpinnings of memory conformity.
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