Adaptive Memories for the Construction of Collective Identities

Research on the malleability of human memory has shown how we can incorporate misinformation under certain social and cognitive conditions. This line of inquiry has led cognitive psychologists to focus on memory errors and misinformation effects caused by social contagion. Based on the same social contagion effect, recent studies have focused on its potentially adaptive features, as a trust-based mode for promoting cultural learning and cooperation among in-group members and enabling the formation and maintenance of mnemonic communities, which are the basis for the emergence, formation and transmission of collective memories. We may consider that collective memories can be operationalized as individual memories shared across a community that bear on the community's identity. These collective memories may belong to an identity project that members of groups often use to preserve an established group history and maintain group cohesion. The aim of this article is to investigate which are the social and cognitive resources that promote the formation of collective memories in social interactions. In order to do so, we discuss several studies in social, cultural and cognitive psychology that have focused on studying the benefits and costs of having collective memories. The empirical evidence suggests that the adaptability of human memory, and therefore, the ability of social groups to create collective memories upon which to base their collective identities, seems to be quite independent of the veracity and accuracy of such memories.