The Bankruptcy of Everyday Memory

A new approach to the study of memory has emerged recently, characterized by a preoccupation with natural settings and with the immediate applicability of research findings. In contrast, the laboratory study of memory relies on experimental techniques for theory testing and is concerned with the discovery of generalizable principles. Although both approaches share the goal of generalizability, they differ sharply in the evaluation of how that goal is best accomplished. In this article, we criticize the everyday memory approach, arguing that ecologically valid methods do not ensure generalizibility of findings. We discuss studies high in ecological validity of method but low in generalizibility, and others low in ecological validity of method but high in generalizibility. We solidly endorse the latter approach, believing that an obsession with ecological validity of method can compromise genuine accomplishments. Once upon a time, when chemistry was young, questions of ecological validity were earnestly raised by well-respected chemists and were debated at scientific meetings and in scholarly journals. We understand from a colleague (who is a distinguished historian of science but modestly asked not to be named) that partisans of one point of view called themselves the "everyday chemistry movement." They pointed out that the world offered many vivid examples of chemical principles at work in our daily lives--the rising of pastry dough, the curdling of sauces (the great chef Brillat-Savarin was then laying the foundation for the principles of applied chemistry thereafter called French cuisine), the smelting of metal alloys, the rusting of armor, and the combustion of gunpowder. Why not, they asked, s tudy chemical principles in these ecologically faithful settings rather than in tiresome laboratories with their unnatural test tubes, burners, and finicky rules of measurement? The normal world around us, they said, has no end of interesting and virtually unstudied manifestations of chemistry. One scholar, who was famous for his contributions to the new science, even commented that he thought one thing was certain: " I f X is an interesting or socially significant aspect of chemistry, then chemists have hardly ever studied X." (Some advocates were actually abusive in their statements; we cite one of the nicer ones). Of course this parable is apocryphal. Its purpose is to make the point that the other sciences would have been hopelessly paralyzed if they had been deprived of the methods of science during their evolution. Imagine astronomy being conducted with only the naked eye, hiology without tissue cultures, physics without vacuums, or chemistry without test tubes! The everyday world is full of principles from these sciences in action, but do we really think their data bases should have been those everyday applications? Of course not. Should the psychology of memory be any different? We think not. There has been more than a decade of passionate rhetoric claiming that important questions about memory could be tackled if only researchers looked to the "real world" for hypothesis validation. Yet, no delivery has been made on these claims: No theories that have unprecedented explanatory power have been produced; no new principles of memory have been discovered; and no methods of data collection have been developed that add sophistication or precision. In this article, we argue that the movement to develop an ecologically valid psychology of memory has proven itself largely bankrupt and, moreover, that it carries the potential danger of compromising genuine accomplishments of our young endeavor. Selected papers presented at two conferences on practical aspects of memory (Gruneberg, Morris, & Sykes, 1978, 1988) and other research on autobiographical memory were used as representative work on memory for everyday events, First, however we should define more exactly the targets of our critique and, here, matters of terminology and special populations deserve mention but little more.