Remembering

Abstract

There is increasing awareness that memory is embedded in social context and subject to social influence, with little concomitant theoretical integration of memory and social psychological thinking. Following a brief classification of social memory phenomena, I attempt such an integration through an extended conception of memory retrieval – inspired by social psychological theorizing – that describes the conversion of accessed memory information into memory beliefs (validation stage) and further into memory statements (communication stage). Both stages draw on external context, including social influence: Broadly, informational influence shapes memory beliefs, and normative influence memory statements. Apart from deepening our understanding of memory retrieval and social memory, this model propagates the further use of social psychology to analyse memory phenomena.