Social Pressure Changes Memory
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 
One of the big findings in the last 20 years about how minds work has to do with memory. Memory is far from an objective record of things. Memory is dynamic and its contents are shaped and recreated by expectations, cognitive biases and social pressure. These memory distortion factors are so powerful that not only do they change content they can spawn false memories that are stronger than the original. A good example was recently documented by researchers exploring how social influence creates false memories.
What they found in a nutshell is that 70% of the time we will change our memory of an event, even one we are confident of, if presented with opposing points of view from other members that participated in the event. The social nature of the opposing point of view is reinforced with social-media style photos. What is shocking is that almost 50% of time when we are told that the opposing view was just a spoof (not true), we still don’t revert to the original memory.
What others think can play a dominate role in the formation and recall of memory. This has strong implications for cognitive designers working in the areas of decision-making and education.
