Abstract
Memory conformity occurs when an individual endorses what other individuals remember about past events. Research on memory conformity is currently dominated by a ‘forensic’ perspective, which views the phenomenon as inherently undesirable. This is because conformity not only distorts the accuracy of an individual's memory, but also produces false corroboration between individuals, effects that act to undermine criminal justice systems. There is growing awareness, however, that memory conformity may be interpreted more generally as an adaptive social behavior regulated by explicit mentalizing mechanisms. Here, we provide novel evidence in support of this emerging alternative theoretical perspective. We carried out a memory conformity experiment which revealed that explicit belief-simulation (i.e. using one's own beliefs to model what other people believe) systematically biases conformity towards like-minded individuals, even when there is no objective evidence that they have a more accurate memory than dissimilar individuals. We suggest that this bias is functional, i.e. adaptive, to the extent that it fosters trust, and hence cooperation, between in-group versus out-group individuals. We conclude that memory conformity is, in more fundamental terms, a highly desirable product of explicit mentalizing mechanisms that promote adaptive forms of social learning and cooperation.
Highlights
Mentalizing is the ability to understand the covert mental states that underlie one’s own and other people’s overt behavior
We provided evidence [3] that memory conformity is regulated by explicit mentalizing mechanisms that promote accuracy in the precise adaptive manner described by Frith and Frith [1]
We hypothesize that a particular explicit mentalizing mechanism may play a key role in building trust between individuals, and to test our proposal we examine whether the engagement of this mechanism leads to significantly enhanced trust in another person’s memory, even when there is no objective evidence that their memory accuracy is superior to that of another social partner
Summary
Mentalizing is the ability to understand the covert mental states that underlie one’s own and other people’s overt behavior. According to Frith and Frith [1], mentalizing serves two adaptive roles in social cognition. Mentalizing about another person’s knowledge relative to one’s own can bias social learning towards individuals offering complementary or superior knowledge, enhancing the accuracy of our own representations of reality [1] [2]. We provided evidence [3] that memory conformity is regulated by explicit mentalizing mechanisms that promote accuracy in the precise adaptive manner described by Frith and Frith [1]. We propose a further explicit mentalizing mechanism that could functionally bias conformity in the absence of objective evidence that one person’s memory is superior to that of another. This proposal is tested in a novel experiment, which reveals that simulating another person’s beliefs (i.e. using one’s own beliefs as a model for their beliefs) biases individuals to conform to the memory of like-minded others who are similar to one’s self
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