People talk to one another about their memories all the time, either for the fun of reminiscing about a past event, or for the purposes of establishing or confirming what happened.The nature of memory means that people’s recollections of the same event can be very different to one another’s. This is because of naturally occurring differences in the details attended to at the time, as well as differences in each person’s ability to accurately remember those details.
Despite these initial differences in each person’s recollections, a growing body of research shows that when people talk about their memories they can influence each other such that their subsequent individual memory reports become similar to one another’s. This phenomenon is typically referred to as memory conformity. It occurs because people accept, and later report, information that is suggested to them in the course of the discussion.
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