Social Memory

How is memory linked to perception?

• our background knowledge can influence our perspective on a person

• memory as background of perception

  • knowledge, beliefs, expectations

• memory and byproduct of perception

  • once we see someone, they become familiar, we remember something about them, we create a new memory

  • record of perceptual activity

Memory of the Person (Person Memory)

• the first study on perception of the person was based on memory

  • Solomon Asch’s Experiments (1946)

    • Ash experiment trying to figure out what are the most important traits essential to form an impression of other people

    • what he did was show people two lists of words, and then they asked them to read one of the lists and then form an impression later

    • that's how researchers use memory to discover how people form impression of others

    • the participants first read about the targets, then report impressions

    • participants need to remember the list they read

    • participants have concepts about the traits they were asked

• other studies that also rely on memory

  • the Susan F. example with the faces

• social cognition was originally called “person memory”

  • person memory book first about social cognition 1975

Different Types of (Long-Term) Memory

• time difference between long and short-term memory

  • short term memory = remembering anything less than 30 seconds

  • long term memory = remembering anything more than 30 seconds

• Declarative memory

  • facts, data, and events

    • episodic memory

      • specific events, when, where, and how it relates to ourselves

      • ex: remembering what you did for your friend’s 10th birthday

    • semantic memory

      • abstract statements of facts and knowledge of the world

      • ex: knowing your friend’s birthday

• Procedural memory

  • how to do things

    • motor

      • procedures that underlie motor skills

      • ex: remembering how to ride a bike

    • cognitive

      • procedures that underlie cognitive skills

      • ex: remembering how to do a math problem/problem-solving skills

How is the Episodic Memory of a Person Represented?

• Individual and Reference in Person Memory: Anderson & Hastie (1974)

• Present Participants with Different Behaviors of A Target

• First, Participants learn about Two Individuals

• Gave people a list a behaviors and asked them to memorize them

  • James Bartlett rescued the kitten.

  • James Bartlett adopted the child.

  • The lawyer caused the accident.

  • The lawyer cursed the salesgirl

• Present Participants with Different Behaviors of A Target

• Then, Participants Learn that the Two Individuals Were the Same

  • James Bartlett is the lawyer

• Finally, Participants were asked questions about James and the lawyer

  • Did James Bartlett cause the accident?

• How are these behaviors encoded in memory?

  • Hypothesis 1: Single Representation

    • one single representation representing this person who is both James and the lawyer, and then this person perform 4 different behaviors

• Hypothesis 2: Barlett first has the good actions and then connect it to lawyer has the bad actions

  • the second hypothesis is that there are two notes represented to person, James Bartlett did two things lawyer did the other two things, and they are linked later on, because this is how exactly the participant learned

  • they first learned about this person and that person and later learned that they are related

• How can you test which hypothesis is more likely?

  • ask different questions, track response time

  • showed that if hypothesis 1 is accurate they should be able to answer if he caused the accident or rescued the kitten, in the same amount of time

  • If hypothesis 2 is accurate they should be able to answer that he rescued the kitten faster than answering that he caused the accident

  

  • showed that hypothesis 1 isn’t the true model

  • they found that when people are asking questions that require no inference, they were significantly faster in answering than question that required inference

  • found that this is only the case if people are first presented with this information of two presumably different individuals, and they were told that the two individuals were the same later

  • if you gave them all of the information at once and not sequentially it showed not much of a significant difference between making inferences or not

  • Suggesting that when you tell people two things about two presumably different people at the same time and tell them that, hey, remember James Bartlett is the lawyer, people actually were able to consolidate the memory into just joining them into one note

  

  • Conclusion

    • how a person is represented in memory depends on how you learned about them

How is Episodic vs. Semantic Memory of a Person Represented?

• Hypothesis 1: traits and behavior represented independently

• Hypothesis 2: behaviors clustered by traits

• How did they test this?

  • Organization of Person Memory: Klein & Loftus (1990)

  • Participants Were Presented 20 Behavior Descriptions

    • Implying 5 different traits, 4 descriptions per traits

      • ex: Athletic, Intelligent, Honest, Religious, Sociable

      • ex of behavioral description that could imply athletic: James ran a marathon

  • classification condition

    • given 20 behavior descriptions and asked to sort them into different categories and most people do it by the traits they imply

  • impression condition

    • just form an impression based on the behavior

  • memorization condition

    • memorize all these behavior items

  • People spontaneously infer traits given behavior descriptions

    • ex: Klein joined the softball practice last night. Klein goes to the church every Sunday. Klein likes talking to other people at the softball event

      • assuming that people will infer this person is athletic

  • Participants Were Asked to Do One of the Following

    • Form an Impression of the Person

      • did it without you explicitly asking them

    • Memorize the Behavior Descriptions

    • Categorize the Behavior Descriptions

  • Finally, Participants Were Asked To Recall The Descriptions

  • When recalling behavior descriptions are they clustered by the traits?

    • only showed clusters when they were explicitly asked to cluster the behavior (the classification part)

      • 

      • by just looking at the recall part they reached the conclusion that in all conditions, participants spontaneously infer traits

        • even though they didn’t present the trait information, the assumption and also the fact is that people spontaneously infer the traits

      • the way the clustering part is classified is when the person starts to record the behavior, they tend to recall behavior belonging to the same group related to the same trait

        • ex: Klein is running a marathon on saturday. She also ran with her friend yesterday. She is also taking soccer classes….

      • when the people were explicitly asked to cluster the desription

        • we found that most of the recall were actually recalled by clusters by the traits

        • but for impression and memorization, when people were not explicitly asked to classify the behavior, but instead of just form an impression or memorize the description, we see much fewer evidence of clustering and it's actually not significantly different from chance.

  • Conclusion

    • Hypothesis 2 is wrong because there was no order for the memorization or impression part

    • behaviors and traits are represented independently

    • Hypothesis 1 is the true model

    • does this mean episodic memory and semantic memory do not influence each other?

      • no, how a person is represented in memory depends on how you learn about them

      • behaviors and traits are represented independently but only when you learn behaviors first

• what happens if you learn the traits first and then the behavior information?

  • then semantic and episodic memory might have a relation

• Schematic Effects on Person Memory: Hastie & Kumar (1979)

• Participants Were Presented with List of Traits that are pretty consistent describing A Target

  • Induce A Schema of What the Target Person Is Like

  • ex: Judy is intelligent, quick, wise, knowledgable, decisive

• Participants Were Presented with List of Behavior Descriptions

  • Schema-Congruent

    • ex: Judy did great on her exam.

  • Schema-Incongruent

    • ex: Judy did terrible on her exam.

  • Schema-Irrelevant

    • ex: Judy likes to play tennis

• Lastly, participants were asked to recall the behavior descriptions

• More people were able to recall the incongruent

  • why?

    • more time being spent thinking about incongruent?

    • it sticks out more?

    • expectation?

• Recall of behaviors differed across conditions

• Conclusion

  • we remember the irrelevant things the least

  • if people learn about the person by looking at their traits first, traits do influence the encoding of the behavioral information

  • traits influence behavior representation in memory if you learn about the traits first

  • HOW YOUR MEMORY WORKS ALL DEPENDS ON HOW YOU LEARN ABOUT THE INFORMATION

    • If you learn about the traits first, then this schema about the person is going to influence how you remember the behavioral information

    • On the contrary, if you learn about the behavioral information first in the last study, then the encoding of behavioral information and the traits is relatively independent

  • This is called the schematic processing principle

    • the memorability of an event is a function of its relationship to pre-existing schemata