Reflections on intersections between cognitive and social psychology: A personal exploration

I appreciate the opportunity offered by the editor to reflect on the relationship between cognitive and social psychology. This topic has interested me my entire professional life, because I was admitted to graduate school to study social psychology and then eventually migrated to cognitive psychology. The organization of this paper is as follows: Ifirst relate my (somewhat puzzling) personal experiences that led me to wonder about relations between cognitive and social psychology. I suggest that, for many topics, the placement of a topic of study in one field or the other is arbitrary. Next I selectively review some common historical influences on the development of both fields, ones that have made them similar. Both grew from common seeds, which include Gestalt psychology as it became applied to a wider array of topics, experimental psychologists becoming interested in attitude change during and after World War II, and Bartlett’s famous book on Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Next I review some research from my lab that picked up themes from Bartlett’s work and that, in some aspects, combines cognitive and social approaches. I also discuss the issue of memory conformity or the social contagion of memory, and conclude with thoughts about how social and cognitive psychologists might collaborate on an exciting new arena, creating empirical studies of collective memory. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[1]  H. Kay,et al.  Learning and retaining verbal material. , 1955, British journal of psychology.

[2]  Robert H. Logie,et al.  The veracity of long-term memories—Did Bartlett get it right? , 1998 .

[3]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[4]  S. Asch.  Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. , 1956 .

[5]  E F Loftus,et al.  Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. , 1978, Journal of experimental psychology. Human learning and memory.

[6]  Michael S. Gazzaniga,et al.  Creating false memories for visual scenes , 1998, Neuropsychologia.

[7]  B. Zeigarnik.  Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen , 1927 .

[8]  Kevin Allan,et al.  Memory conformity: Can eyewitnesses influence each other's memories for an event? , 2003 .

[9]  K. McDermott,et al.  Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. , 1995 .

[10]  H L Roediger,et al.  Social contagion of memory , 2001, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[11]  H L Roediger,et al.  Can Bartlett’s repeated reproduction experiments be replicated? , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[12]  Harold M. Proshansky,et al.  Basic studies in social psychology , 1965 .

[13]  J. Wertsch.  Voices of Collective Remembering , 2002 .

[14]  Education Division.  Studies in social psychology in World War II , 1949 .

[15]  Asher Koriat,et al.  Monitoring and control processes in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy , 1996 .

[16]  Henry L. Roediger,et al.  Disparate Effects of Repeated Testing: Reconciling Ballard's (1913) and Bartlett's (1932) Results , 1992 .

[17]  M. J. Rosenberg.  Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Components of Attitudes , 1960 .

[18]  J. Wertsch,et al.  Creating a new discipline of memory studies , 2008 .

[19]  W. Brown,et al.  To What Extent Is Memory Measured by a Single Recall , 1923 .

[20]  Henry L. Roediger,et al.  Misinformation Effects in Recall: Creating False Memories through Repeated Retrieval , 1996 .

[21]  J. E. Young,et al.  The texture of memory : Holocaust memorials and meaning , 1996 .

[22]  R. Hastie,et al.  Person memory: Personality traits as organizing principles in memory for behaviors. , 1979 .

[23]  Mary Susan Weldon,et al.  Remembering as a social process , 2000 .

[24]  F. Bartlett,et al.  Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology , 1932 .

[25]  J. Wertsch,et al.  Memory in Mind and Culture: List of Contributors , 2009 .

[26]  G. Stephenson,et al.  Some experiments relating to Bartlett's theory of remembering. , 1967, British journal of psychology.

[27]  J. Deese.  On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. , 1959, Journal of experimental psychology.

[28]  K. Lewin,et al.  The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin , 1971 .

[29]  Murdock,et al.  The serial position effect of free recall , 1962 .

[30]  Henry L. Roediger,et al.  The role of recall time in producing hypermnesia , 1978 .

[31]  K. McDermott.  The Persistence of False Memories in List Recall , 1996 .

[32]  C. I. Hovland.  The Order Of Presentation In Persuasion , 1966 .

[33]  P. Tannenbaum,et al.  Theories of cognitive consistency: a sourcebook. , 1968 .

[34]  K. Gergen.  Review Of "Collective Memory Of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives" Edited By J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, And B. Rimé , 1997 .

[35]  M. Erdelyi,et al.  Hypermnesia for pictures: Incremental memory for pictures but not words in multiple recall trials☆ , 1974 .

[36]  J. Wertsch.  Collective Memory and Narrative Templates , 2014 .

[37]  H. Kelley.  Attribution theory in social psychology , 1967 .

[38]  E. E. Jones.  Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior , 1987 .

[39]  J. Wertsch,et al.  Collective memory: Conceptual foundations and theoretical approaches , 2008, Memory.

[40]  H. V. Restorff.  Über die Wirkung von Bereichsbildungen im Spurenfeld , 1933 .

[41]  I. H. Paul.  Studies in Remembering , 1959 .

[42]  Trond E. Jacobsen,et al.  The Collective Memory , 1980 .

[43]  M. Ross,et al.  Social Memory Processes , 2008 .

[44]  D. G. Payne,et al.  Hypermnesia as determined by level of recall , 1982 .

[45]  Esther da Costa Meyer.  The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning , 1994 .

[46]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[47]  H. Head.  STUDIES IN NEUROLOGY , 1921 .

[48]  Dorthe Berntsen,et al.  Personal memories for remote historical events: accuracy and clarity of flashbulb memories related to World War II. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[49]  N. S. Johnson,et al.  Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[50]  E. Loftus,et al.  Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory , 1974 .

[51]  H. Roediger,et al.  Remembering, knowing, and reconstructing the past , 1993 .

[52]  Henry L Roediger,et al.  Explorations in the social contagion of memory , 2002, Memory & cognition.

[53]  H. Roediger,et al.  The effects of delayed presentation of the object of aggression on pain-induced fighting , 1970 .

[54]  L. Postman,et al.  The psychology of rumor , 1947 .

[55]  Jeffrey D. Karpicke,et al.  The Power of Testing Memory Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice , 2006 .

[56]  S. S. Stevens,et al.  Handbook of experimental psychology , 1951 .

[57]  R. Bond,et al.  Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. , 1996 .

[58]  D. Wright,et al.  Memory conformity: exploring misinformation effects when presented by another person. , 2000, British journal of psychology.