Cognition Through a Social Network: The Propagation of Induced Forgetting and Practice Effects

Although a burgeoning literature has shown that practice effects and socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting can reshape the memories of speakers and listeners involved in a conversation, it has generally failed to examine whether such effects can propagate through a sequence of conversational interactions. This lacuna is unfortunate, since sequences of social interactions are more common than single, isolated ones. The present research explores how people exposed to attitudinally biased selective practice propagate the practice and forgetting effects into subsequent conversations with attitudinally similar and dissimilar others and, through these conversations, affect subsequent acts of remembering. The research establishes that the propagation of retrieval-induced forgetting and practice effects is transitive. It also determines when attitude influences propagation. These findings are discussed in the context of the formation of collective memories.