Effect of Group Pressure on Memory Reconstruction

By Richard Reeve

A studied phenomenon that has an interesting wrinkle in the age of cyberpolarization, do we give consideration to how the tales people tell are changing our own memories?  As this abstract on how memory reconstruction gets influenced by group pressure demonstrates, intentionally fabricated stories can have an immediate effect on our memories of recent events.

“Each subject watched a 10-minute segment from a movie and then answered questions about the movie segment. Treatment subjects were questioned orally with three confederate subjects who responded to the questions before the subject responded and who lied on 8 out of 20 questions. Control subjects answered the same questions in a written questionnaire. Each subject returned in one week to answer the standard written questionnaire. The results indicated that treatment subjects’ performance was much poorer than that of control subjects during the initial session. Their performance improved in the recall testing session but remained poorer than that of the control subjects.” Diane Martichuski, Effect of Group Pressure on Memory Reconstruction, Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the Southwestern Psychological Association (32nd, Fort Worth, TX, April 17-19, 1986)

Memory distortion can be caused by a variety of factors including the need is to have a story fit the emotional complex that surrounds it. A fascinating study on this phenomenon is Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, edited by Daniel Schacter. As one review points out:

“Human memory is not like a photograph album, a collection of cassettes, compact discs or videos or any other accumulative archive of the past. Rather, memories are fragmentary, condensed, often distorted and inaccurate representations of past experience.” Martin A. Conway (Nature )

This issue also brings up a challenge specific to helping others in recovery.  One of the reasons the newcomer in recovery is cautioned against “war storying” is to counter the tendency to exaggerate and/or fabricate the facts of their story.  The grandiosity of these denial behaviors can lead to a memory distortion which in the end only lead the individual further away from facing the reality of their own actions.