Social contagion and true self

Abstract

In social contagion of memory, we incorporate information from other participants into our own memory and thus remember differently than we would have alone (Meade & Roediger, 2002). The current experiments examined if individual differences in true self would influence participants' reliance on their own memory relative to another person's memory and potentially influence the magnitude of the social contagion effect. Across two experiments, we primed differences in participants' true self and then asked them to remember visual scenes alongside a confederate who falsely suggested certain items had appeared in the scenes. In both experiments, participants incorporated the confederate's suggestions into their own subsequent recall and recognition. In Experiment 1, true self had no impact on the magnitude of the social contagion effect on recall or recognition performance. In Experiment 2, true self again had no impact on the magnitude of the social contagion effect on recall, but participants primed with intrinsic and achievement self reported a higher proportion of remember responses for falsely recalled items, and on recognition, individuals in the neutral condition falsely recognized fewer words than individuals in the achievement group. These findings are discussed in relation to source monitoring theory.