Transactive Memory in Small, Intimate Groups: More Than the Sum of Their Parts

Abstract

Thirty years after social psychologist, Daniel Wegner, pitched a new approach to the study of individual and group behavior, his theory of transactive memory has inspired rich literatures on the cognitive and social lives of small groups, especially in social and organizational domains. We revisit Wegner's original conceptualization of transactive memory as a feature of long-standing intimate groups, such as romantic couples and other family and friendship groups. We sketch the spread and success of Wegner's theory across social, organizational, cognitive, and educational domains, noting particular spaces where a renewed focus on intimate groups could add to our vision of transactive memory systems. We review recent interdisciplinary research on couples as socially distributed cognitive systems, which combines influential philosophical views of distributed cognition and the burgeoning experimental memory literature on collaborative recall. We then discuss two core conceptual and methodological challenges of Wegner's theorizing revealed by intimate and other groups: navigating between memory units, or levels of analysis, and measuring genuine emergence in transactive memory systems. Finally, we suggest an interdisciplinary framework and recommendations for future research on transactive memory in small groups.

Features of Successful and Unsuccessful Collaborative Memory Conversations in Long‐Married Couples

“…The Mutual Friends task in this study did not have this asymmetry built into it, and nominating an expert was rare. However, the possible role of shared expertise in driving the large collaborative benefits we found requires further investigation, as does the importance of balancing overlapping versus specialized expertise in couples' transactive memory systems (see also Barnier, Klein, et al., ). The crucial importance of specific communication techniques also has implications for any application of the benefits of collaboration to groups who need memory support (Barnier, Harris, & Congleton, ; Blumen et al., ).…”

“…We contacted these 47 couples by mail and then by phone to invite them to participate. This recruitment resulted in the 39 couples who were tested for the current research (see also Barnier, Harris, et al, 2018).…”

“…There has also long been interest in collaborative memory benefits in domains where enhancing memory performance is the goal, such as in gerontology (e.g., Dixon, 1999Dixon, , 2011Dixon, , 2013Kemper, Lyons, & Anagnopoulos, 1995;Rauers, Riediger, Schmiedek, & Lindenberger, 2011) and child development (Kulkofsky, 2011;Nelson & Fivush, 2004;Sutton, 2015). In cognitive psychology, Daniel Wegner's pioneering theory of "transactive memory" (Wegner, 1987;Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991;Wegner, Giuliano, & Hertel, 1985), which aimed to make "group mind" empirically tractable and predicted benefits of joint remembering, has had slow uptake (Barnier, Klein, & Harris, 2018). Developed separately, the experimental "collaborative recall" paradigm provided a strict method for quantifying the influence of a group on how much is remembered (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), and research in this domain typically finds that collaboration reduces recall productivity (see Marion & Thorley, 2016 for a review).…”

“…Developed separately, the experimental "collaborative recall" paradigm provided a strict method for quantifying the influence of a group on how much is remembered (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), and research in this domain typically finds that collaboration reduces recall productivity (see Marion & Thorley, 2016 for a review). However, collaborative recall experiments typically have focused on groups of strangers and not groups in which benefits of shared remembering might be expected, such as intimate groups in which group members know each other well and have a long-shared history (Barnier, Klein, et al, 2018;Harris, Keil, Sutton, Barnier, & McIlwain, 2011). In the current research, motivated by transactive memory theory's emphasis on intimacy and effective communication as leading to memory benefits, we extended the robust methodology of collaborative recall to focus on intimate groups and their communication styles, examining the features of successful collaboration in long-married older couples (see also Harris, Barnier, Sutton, Keil, & Dixon, 2017;Harris, Barnier, et al, 2014;Harris, Rasmussen, et al, 2014) According to transactive memory theory, as members of groups become familiar with each other and experience events together, they can develop an efficient system for sharing the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information (Barnier, Klein, et al, 2018;Wegner et al, 1985;Wegner, 1987).…”

“…However, collaborative recall experiments typically have focused on groups of strangers and not groups in which benefits of shared remembering might be expected, such as intimate groups in which group members know each other well and have a long-shared history (Barnier, Klein, et al, 2018;Harris, Keil, Sutton, Barnier, & McIlwain, 2011). In the current research, motivated by transactive memory theory's emphasis on intimacy and effective communication as leading to memory benefits, we extended the robust methodology of collaborative recall to focus on intimate groups and their communication styles, examining the features of successful collaboration in long-married older couples (see also Harris, Barnier, Sutton, Keil, & Dixon, 2017;Harris, Barnier, et al, 2014;Harris, Rasmussen, et al, 2014) According to transactive memory theory, as members of groups become familiar with each other and experience events together, they can develop an efficient system for sharing the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information (Barnier, Klein, et al, 2018;Wegner et al, 1985;Wegner, 1987). Wegner suggested that such systems rely on the individual memory systems of the group members, an accurate shared meta-knowledge about "who knows what," and effective communication or "transactions" which allow the group as a whole to access the information stored by all individuals (Wegner, 1987;Wegner et al, 1985).…”