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From individual to collective memory: Theoretical

and empirical perspectives
a a
Amanda J. Barnier PhD & John Sutton
a
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Published online: 06 Mar 2008.

To cite this article: Amanda J. Barnier PhD & John Sutton (2008) From individual to collective memory: Theoretical
and empirical perspectives, Memory, 16:3, 177-182, DOI: 10.1080/09541440701828274

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 MEMORY, 2008, 16 (3), 177182

Editorial

From individual to collective memory: Theoretical and

empirical perspectives

Amanda J. Barnier and John Sutton

Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 07:10 10 August 2013

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF and illustrate tightly focused methods for inves-
SOCIAL MEMORY PHENOMENA tigating transactive memory, collaborative recall,
memory contagion, and the dynamics of decision-
Very often our memories of the past are of making in small groups.
experiences or events we shared with others. Across six theoretical reviews and four original
And ‘‘in many circumstances in society, remem- empirical reports, this special issue addresses two
bering is a social event’’ (Roediger, Bergman, & major themes. First, how do groups operate to
Meade, 2000, p. 129): parents and children process information, especially memories*what
reminisce about significant family events, friends are the costs and benefits of collaboration?
discuss a movie they just saw together, students Second, what are the pathways to and between
study for exams with their roommates, colleagues individual and collective memory*how does
remind one another of information relevant to an individual memory constrain and contribute to
important group decision, and complete strangers collaborative remembering, and how do groups
discuss a crime they happened to witness to- shape individual memory?
gether. Psychology is at the heart of recent We approach these questions with some con-
interdisciplinary efforts to understand the rela- fidence that previous disciplinary and theoretical
tionships between an individual remembering gulfs can be bridged, especially if we look for
alone, an individual remembering in a group, coordination and interaction between different
and the group itself remembering. forms of memory, and between different levels or
The 10 papers in this special issue of Memory grains of analysis. Such an approach should over-
exemplify, evaluate, and extend a range of in- come any residual suspicion or mutual disinterest
creasingly mainstream conceptual frameworks between psychological and social-scientific stu-
and empirical paradigms for the psychological dies of memory. There is no need, we suggest, for
study of diverse social memory phenomena. over-ambitious universalism on either side: there
Established and emerging memory researchers is no good scientific reason either to discount
adapt and apply theoretical approaches from the social contexts as mere external triggers to the
cognitive, developmental, clinical, and cultural real memory processes in the head, or to treat
psychology of memory, as well as ideas from the remembering as an entirely social and worldly
broader cognitive sciences about the epidemiol- business to which psychology is irrelevant.
ogy of representations, distributed cognition, and The contributions to this special issue of
social ontology. At the same time, they analyse Memory highlight the need for and value of

Address correspondence to: Amanda J. Barnier PhD, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney,
NSW 2109, Australia. E-mail: abarnier@maccs.mq.edu.au

# 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/memory DOI:10.1080/09541440701828274
 178 BARNIER AND SUTTON

concerted psychological attention to questions be aided by a set of dimensions on which cases of

about social and collective memory, which will remembering may vary. We can pay attention to
combine with and enrich burgeoning traditions in the size and nature of different groups with
other disciplines (cf. Middleton & Brown, 2005; different histories, aims, and structures, and to
Wertsch, 2002). This brief introduction is not the the different cultural or institutional roles that
place to survey the potential relevance to the group members play. We can ask, for example,
psychological study of social memory phenomena which of the many possible patterns of informa-
of ideas about distributed cognition (Barnier, tion-sharing and transmission the group employs,
Sutton, Harris, & Wilson, in press; Beach, 1988; how decision-making and other executive roles
Clark, 1997; Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh, 2006; List, in are distributed, and by which particular methods
press; Sutton, 2006; Wilson, 2005), or of contribu- the group tracks its own past actions and deci-
tions from the social sciences (Cole, 2005; Con- sions over time. More specifically, drawing on
nerton, 1989; Olick, 1999) and philosophy cognitive, organisational, and developmental psy-
(Campbell, 2003, 2006; Hoerl & McCormack, chology, we can seek ways to analyse the
2005; Sutton, 2007, in press). It is also not the dynamics and micro-processes of collaboration
place to consider the complex and uncertain and discussion in different groups, and we can
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legacy of Bartlett’s attempt to build social psy- study the different media they employ for in-
chology into the heart of a theory of remember- formational and social exchange, their explicit or
ing, nor to diagnose what has recently been called implicit social decision schemes, and the functions
a ‘‘crisis of memory’’ in Western culture or of disagreement within different groups. We can
academia. Readers concerned with these ques- examine the forms in which individual and group
tions, which are of considerable interest in the views about the shared or unshared past are
philosophy and sociology of science, will find expressed, and analyse the product of, for in-
ample raw material in the papers that follow, as stance, group recall or discussion in relation to the
well as in the citations above. aims of the task and the long-term goals of the
Our intention in this introduction instead is to group and of its members.
give a sense of the diversity of the phenomena To highlight one example, our papers demon-
under investigation. The terminological confu- strate the strength of current empirical paradigms
sions about ‘‘collective memory’’ that our con- for studying the dynamics and the products of
tributors identify and resolve in their own ways are collaborative recall. They focus on robust results
due, we suggest, to the multiplicity of relevant and such as collaborative inhibition; the finding that
under-theorised phenomena, not to their non- the information produced by a group in remem-
existence. It’s not that science has settled what bering together*though more than any one of
counts as a case of remembering, and that different the members could have produced alone*is
theorists then disagree over whether anything typically less than the pooled sum of information
within that fixed domain is in fact collective produced by the same number of individuals
remembering. Rather, as Hirst and Manier argue remembering alone (Basden, Basden, Bryber, &
in our opening paper, what might look like Thomas, 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). What
competing theoretical approaches in fact apply to matters is not whether such products do or don’t
distinct, but complementary, aspects of the world under some circumstances deserve the label
of memory phenomena. So the aim should be to ‘‘collective memory’’, but our capacity to detect
integrate observations of and claims about social and explain the different ways in which they
memory phenomena into a broader picture of the emerge and the different properties they exhibit
mechanisms underlying the transformation and in all these varying circumstances.
transmission of all kinds of memories. This picture Next, in identifying dimensions for studying
will rely centrally, although perhaps not exclu- the relationship between individual and collective
sively, on our best cognitive theories of and memory, we can address the short- and long-term
methods for studying individual memory. influences of such group membership and such
Taken together, the 10 papers in this special collaborative processes on individuals’ subse-
issue of Memory suggest that an empirically quent memory capacities and performance.
tractable psychological approach to the relation- What we take away from our various social
ships between individual and collective memory interactions can have complex effects on our
will naturally be anchored in the study of small own later behaviour, remembering included, and
groups rather than, for instance, nations, and will can shape what we then bring to the other group
 FROM INDIVIDUAL TO COLLECTIVE MEMORY 179

contexts we inhabit. Under some conditions, for tinues to seek principled connections between, for
example, recollection of shared past events may example, remembering word lists or short digit
converge with those of others with whom they strings and, for example, emotional autobiogra-
have been discussed, or may incorporate informa- phical remembering. The reconciliation of labora-
tion encountered only from other people and not tory and ecological approaches to memory over
originally encoded. In other contexts, it can be the last 15 years has been based in part on a
left up to trusted others to carry the details of broadly shared confidence in the mutual relevance
some body of knowledge, where the trust under- of more basic and more complex memory phe-
writes confidence that this information can be nomena. Research in tightly controlled contexts
accessed when needed (Wegner, 1987; Wegner, aims at identifying processes that contribute
Erber, & Raymond, 1991; Wegner, Giuliano, & directly to remembering in the wild, even if they
Hertel, 1985). are in turn modified and transformed as they are
The common mechanisms underlying these co-opted by broader systems. Similar forms of
phenomena, as argued in the paper by French, interaction, we suggest, are in play as we extend
Garry, and Mori, can produce both beneficial and from more complex forms of individual remem-
troubling outcomes. On the one hand, for exam- bering to complex remembering alongside others
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ple, we may talk with trusted others and success- (such as in co-witness discussion) and to colla-
fully renegotiate the emotional significance of a borative work on the past among longstanding,
shared past experience, to arrive at both a more organised groups. Just as different forms of mem-
accurate picture of the past and a more fruitful ory within the individual can operate on the same
conception of current self and other. On the other information as it is transformed or abstracted or
hand, as established traditions of work on mis- conventionalised (Toth & Hunt, 1999), so the same
information and memory contagion demonstrate, content can be transmitted across individuals, with
memories of our own experiences can be sub- its fate shaped by the available social resources
stantially distorted or confused by external influ- and dynamics (Sperber, 1996).
ence (Loftus, 2005). As Bartlett (1932) argued, So in addition to clearer methods and larger
the constructive filling in of gaps in our memories datasets for studying memory processes across a
is driven either by the actual presence of others as range of groups, we will aim for nested and multi-
we seek interpersonal coordination, or by the dimensional theoretical frameworks (cf. Barnier
active, schema-mediated interests, sentiments, et al., in press). If we make the necessary
and ideals that reflect the tendencies of our social distinctions between, for instance, shared and
organisation. And so, of course, not all social unshared events, more and less established and
effects on individual memory are malign. We coherent groups, and more and less interactive
often talk about the shared past with partners, forms of collaboration, we can more clearly
friends, family, or colleagues in order to facilitate isolate the effects of each of these dimensions in
or tap what may be only fragmentary, partial, or turn, as well as more clearly identify the interac-
shrouded in our own memories. A key challenge tions between these dimensions in the complex
for the experimental study of social memory is to situations in which we remember the past to-
understand both the unusual contexts in which gether. Such an approach, in turn, will encourage
transactive, distributed, or collaborative memory mutual feedback between the cognitive psychol-
systems may in fact promote accuracy, and the ogy of collaborative remembering and various
range of functions that shared remembering may applied fields, as illustrated in a number of the
have besides or beyond accuracy. papers in this special issue; they promise better
Functional approaches to memory, utilised in a integration, for example, with studies of group
number of our papers, exemplify the possibility of processes and shared remembering in education
finding relationships between individual and col- and in organisations, as well as the ongoing study
lective remembering that are stronger than mere of transactive remembering among older people.
analogy. The point is not just that the regulatory
and directive roles of remembering, for example,
can apply in groups as in individuals, but that it’s THE CONTENTS OF THIS SPECIAL
often precisely the difficult coordination of the ISSUE
individual- and group-level functions that drives
and thus explains particular features of the ways in We turn now to summarise briefly the contribu-
which we remember together. Psychology con- tions of the papers in this special issue. In the first
 180 BARNIER AND SUTTON

paper, ‘‘Towards a psychology of collective mem- recall of groups of participants who collaborated
ory’’, Hirst and Manier situate psychology in the either face-to-face or electronically. They find
broader field of social scientific studies of collec- different costs and benefits depending on the
tive memory. They distinguish between, on the media of exchange, which implies that social
one hand, the design of social resources and memory performance is ‘‘due not only to intra-
memory practices and, on the other hand, the personal factors stemming from cognitive inter-
mechanisms underlying the transmission and ference, but also to interpersonal costs of
transformation of memories between individual coordinating the group product’’.
and collective. Whereas the former is often seen In the sixth paper, ‘‘You say tomato? Colla-
as the province of social scientists and the latter borative remembering between intimate couples
as the province of psychologists, Hirst and Manier leads to more false memories than collaborative
argue that they are complementary, rather than remembering between strangers’’, French, Garry,
incompatible, approaches to the study of social and Mori extend the well-investigated memory
memory phenomena. conformity paradigm to examine whether the
In the second paper, ‘‘The development of relationship between discussion partners is im-
collective remembering’’, developmental psychol- portant. They report, not unexpectedly, that
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ogists Reese and Fivush outline a sociocultural, romantic partners rely on one another’s memories
developmental approach to collective memory. more than do strangers. More problematically,
Reviewing a now extensive empirical literature, however, romantic partners also yield to one
they identify the crucible of all memories in another’s memory errors.
conversations about the past between parents In the final empirical paper, ‘‘Performance and
and children, and stress that individual and process in collective and individual memory: The
collective memories are ‘‘radically interactive’’.
role of social decision schemes and memory bias
In the third paper, ‘‘Collaborative recall and
in collective memory’’, Van Swol adopts methods
collective memory: What happens when we
of small group and organisational research and
remember together?’’, Harris, Paterson, and
reports the indirect memory outcomes of a group
Kemp review the literature on group remember-
decision-making task. Focusing on recognition
ing and draw together findings from different
memory rather than the more typical free recall,
traditions. They lead us clearly through the
she shows how individuals’ and groups’ subse-
complexities of paradigms for investigating indi-
quent memories are influenced by the earlier
vidual and group recall and raise questions about
decision-making processes of the group.
the outcomes and consequences of group discus-
In three final theoretical papers, our authors
sion about the past. This paper lays the metho-
dological foundation for the four empirical papers extend the boundaries of the psychological study
that follow. of social memory phenomena in important ways.
The next four papers report new empirical data In our eighth paper, ‘‘Collective memory: A
from well-established experimental procedures, perspective from (experimental) clinical psychol-
which add to our understanding of the micro- ogy’’, clinical psychologists Wessel and Moulds
processes of social memory. In the fourth paper, first consider explicitly, yet critically, those con-
‘‘Re-exposure and retrieval disruption during cepts from the study of individual memory in
group collaboration as well as repeated retrieval cognitive and clinical psychology that can be
influence later individual recall’’, Blumen and fruitfully applied to the study of collective mem-
Rajaram meticulously combine different se- ory. Second, they argue that the social memory
quences of individual and group recall sessions literature may inform the study of trauma-related
to evaluate three potential hypotheses about disorders and associated clinical practice.
collaborative recall. They consider both the In the ninth paper, ‘‘On the cultural constitu-
negative effects of retrieval disruption and the tion of collective memory’’, cross-cultural psy-
potentially positive effects of re-exposure to chologist Wang analyses how functional
additional items during group recall. variations of collective memory across cultures
In the fifth paper, ‘‘Collaborative recall in face- may influence the processes, practices, and out-
to-face and electronic groups’’, Ekeocha and comes of collective remembering. She proposes a
Brennan ask a related question about recalling new approach, in which the individual, the
in groups. Using a short movie clip, rather than collective, and the culture are treated as a single
the more typical list of words, they compare the unit of analysis.
 FROM INDIVIDUAL TO COLLECTIVE MEMORY 181

In the final paper, ‘‘Collective memory: Con- mature sciences of individual memory. But, as the
ceptual foundations and theoretical approaches’’, papers in this special issue of Memory demon-
Wertsch and Roediger, two leading figures in strate, active integration of conceptual frame-
memory studies, offer a map of the conceptual works and empirical methods, which allows us
space involved in discussions of collective mem- to move between individual and collective mem-
ory across diverse disciplines. In this, as well as in ory, is already well under way.
their other influential work, they treat the so-
cially-situated individual as the bridge between
the individual and the collective. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As a set, these papers contribute to four
important goals in this developing domain. First, This special issue is one outcome of a one-day
these authors are working to develop clear, workshop*the Sydney Collective Memory Meet-
testable frameworks for social memory phenom- ing, held in Sydney in July 2006, a few days before
ena, whether from cognitive, developmental, the 4th International Conference on Memory
cultural, or clinical perspectives. Second, they (ICOM-4).1 We are grateful to those people*
are contributing to a strong, empirical foundation from psychology, philosophy, the humanities,
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on the micro-processes of social memory. Over and cognitive science*who contributed so gener-
time, the goal will be to extend basic research ously to the meeting. A number of attendees
across a full range of memory cases and remem- submitted papers to this special issue and, with
bering groups. Third, they are exploring the additional contributions from other researchers in
balance between positive and negative effects of the field, the thoughtful, innovative, and multi-
remembering with others, especially depending disciplinary flavour of that meeting is captured in
on context, and thus balancing the pessimism in these pages. We wish to acknowledge the Aus-
some quarters about social influences on memory. tralian Research Council for their support of that
As we noted above, in some contexts, such as the meeting and of our interdisciplinary research on
forensic setting, it is entirely appropriate to focus individual and collective memory, as well as the
on the potential contaminating influences of Coogee Surf Lifesaving Club for providing an
remembering with others. In other contexts, iconic venue for the meeting. Finally, we wish to
such as in intimate and longstanding relationships, thank our collaborators for their inspiration and
it makes more sense to focus on the positive perspiration: Rochelle Cox, Celia Harris, Paul
functions of remembering together. Fourth, and Keil, and Charlie Stone.
finally, these authors are considering the full
effects of collaboration, as well as the purpose
of collaborating. Work in this field will be
increasingly relevant as we measure beyond just
the amount recalled and its accuracy, and con-
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