The Propagation of Memories within Small Groups and across Social Networks
Project Homepage
This project was supported by the NSF's Perception, Action, & Cognition and Social Psychology Programs (Award #1456928).
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
About the Project
The idea of social influence has long been a topic of fascination. However, recent work has argued that those within our social networks (e.g., friends, family) exert influence that is both more pervasive and more complex that previously thought. The people you surround yourself with influence everything from smoking to the clothes you wear to your life expectancy to the number of children you decide to have. The current project seeks to investigate how these influences occur, and proposes an investigation of the flow of information between individuals to understand social influences. The project will include a sequence of behavioral experiments. In addition, the project will ultimately generate a computational model developed on the basis of the behavioral findings. This model will allow rigorous predictions to be made about how information flows within large, realistic social networks. Overall, the project will provide insight that will improve understanding of how behaviors are transmitted with populations and can ultimately guide policies related to social influences on a variety of behaviors (such life expectancy, eyewitness memory, and smoking).
The current project seeks to investigate the social transmission of memory and how such transmission shapes the memories shared among individuals (i.e., collective memory) as the basis for understanding how social networks influence behavior. Because the structure of the network becomes increasingly complex as social networks increase in size and because past work has almost exclusively employed small, unstructured groups, the project focuses on the structure of the interactions. The project consists of a series of studies investigating an increasingly complex set of social interactions. Each study consists of a behavioral experiment and an analogous agent-based computational simulation. The behavioral experiments will provide empirical data allowing the model to then be revised so as to more accurately reflect the underlying psychological processes. With the increasing complexity of the experiments, each set of behavioral data will represent an increasingly rigorous test of the agent model. The project will ultimately yield a psychologically plausible model capable of both describing the mechanisms that underlie the social transmission of memory and of faithfully capturing the flow of memory convergence (and divergence) of individuals situated within structured networks. Once realized, this experimentally-validated model will allow collective memory phenomena to be investigated at scales that are not feasible in laboratory settings.
Research Team
Principal investigators
Students
REU-supported Research Assistants
- Yvonne Chanda
- Brittany Paradiso
Publications and Presentations
Journal Articles
- Luhmann, C. C., & Rajaram, S. (2015). Memory transmission in small groups and large networks: An agent-based model. Psychological Science, 26, 1909-1917. View
- Barber, S. J., Harris, C. B., & Rajaram, S. (2015). Why two heads apart are better than two heads together: Multiple mechanisms underlie the collaborative inhibition effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41, 559-566. View
- Blumen, H. M., Young, K. E., & Rajaram, S. (2014). Optimizing group collaboration to maximize later individual retention. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3, 244-251. View
- Choi, H.-Y., Blumen, H. M., Congleton, A. R., & Rajaram, S. (2014) The role of group configuration in the social transmission of memory: Evidence from identical and reconfigured groups. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 65-80. View
- Congleton, A.R., & Rajaram, S. (2014). Collaboration changes both the content and the structure of memory: Building the architecture of shared representations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1570-1584. View
Conference Proceedings
- Luhmann, C. C., & Rajaram, S. (2013). Mnemonic diffusion: An agent-based modeling investigation of collective memory. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 936-941). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Keynote/Invited Talks
- Rajaram, S. (March, 2016). Social transmission of emotional memory. Invited presentation at the Center on Autobiographical Memory Research (Con Amore), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
- Rajaram, S. (February, 2016). Social transmission of memory: Learning and remembering in groups. Invited talk at Yale University, New Haven, CT.
- Luhmann, C. C. (January, 2015). Social Interactions as Dynamic Learning Environments. Cognitive Brownbag, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
- Luhmann, C. C. (December, 2014). Adaptive Learning During Strategic Interactions. Presentation at the Stony Brook Center for Behavioral Political Economy, Stony Brook, NY.
- Rajaram, S. (March, 2014). Memory in a Social Context: How does Collaboration Shape Memory? Keynote address, The North Carolina Cognition Group Conference, Durham, NC.
- Rajaram, S. (June, 2014). Social Transmission of Memory. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Rajaram, S. (October, 2015). Social Transmission of Memory: Learning and Remembering in Groups. Invited Departmental Colloquium, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Conference Presentations
- Bixter, M. T., Johnson, K. L., Rajaram, S., & Luhmann, C. C. (November, 2015). Socially Transmitted Memory Biases: Influences on Decision Making. Talk presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago, IL.
- Congleton, A., & Rajaram, S. (July, 2015). The Influence of Collaborative Remembering on Varieties of Memory. Paper presented in S. Rajaram & W. Hirst (Organizers), Symposium held at the 11th Annual Conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Victoria, Canada.
- Pociask, S., Marsh, E., & Rajaram, S. (July, 2015). Retrieving Knowledge in a Collaborative Context: Costs, Benefits, and Implications. Paper presented in W. Hirst & S. Rajaram (Organizers), Symposium held at the 11th Annual Conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Victoria, Canada.
- Luhmann, C. C. & Rajaram, S. (2013, November). Social Transmission of Memory: An Agent-Based Modeling Investigation. Poster presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, Canada.
- Luhmann, C. C., & Rajaram, S. (2013, August). Mnemonic Diffusion: An Agent-Based Modeling Investigation of Collective Memory. Presentation at the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Berlin, Germany.
Coverage
- Luhmann & Rajaram (2015, Psychological Science) coverage:
- Choi, H.-Y. et al. (2014, Journal of Cognitive Psychology) wins Best Paper of the Year from the European Society of Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP).
Contact Us
Please address any inquiries about this project to:
Christian Luhmann
Stony Brook University
Department of Psychology
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500
Email: christian.luhmann@stonybrook.edu
Phone: (631) 632-7086
Suparna Rajaram
Stony Brook University
Department of Psychology
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500
Email: suparna.rajaram@stonybrook.edu
Phone: (631) 632-7841