No abstract

Recent public testimony concerning sexual abuse on the part of celebrities raises the question of what happens to memories when they enter the public domain. The present paper reviews research on the effects of communication on memory and examines how the context of this communication affects its influence on memory, both in the short and long term. Specifically, we discuss how communication with the self, a small group, and the larger public affects the content and availability of different elements of both emotional and more mundane memories, in the short term and in the long term. Evidence suggests that, although forgetting is rapid in the first few years, it then levels off. Although this pattern would suggest that the effects conversational influences have on memory may be limited to the first few years, the present paper argues that the pattern will vary as the source changes.

Human beings’ unique drive to immortalize the important lessons we have learned is as old as civilization itself. The drive to pass on our cultural heritage to those we are more immediately temporally linked to, and those that we are more distantly temporally linked to, must then, serve an adaptive function. For animals as socially determined as humans, public heritage, through its reciprocal relationship with collective memory, supports the development of social cohesion between individuals, and therefore allows us to coalesce into groups and societies. How is this achieved? This chapter will focus on evidence that suggests what makes it into, or out of, our public heritage is about the functional role that information plays in shaping collective identity, not its validity, and will be determined by the extended interactional dynamics of the situation. Specifically, we focus on the role that conversational dynamics play in the formation of collective memories.