Group identification and the formation of collective memories

Evidence shows that conversation shapes individual as well as collective memories. When we interact with others, we identify them and ourselves as members of any of an innumerable array of social groups. The present study explores whether the process of making these identifications while taking part in memory conversations shapes the development of individual and collective memories.; Sperber's (1994) general model of the epidemiology of representations is used as the basis for a model of the development of collective memories in conversation. The model includes successive phases of individual and conversational remembering, which are linked by processes of interpretation and reconstruction. Group identifications may be intertwined with the processes that shape the interpretation, encoding and reconstruction of memories.; Participants in a group memory task were randomly categorized into artificial groups. The study explores whether their group identifications shaped the course of the conversation, the emergence of conversational roles, and subsequent individual recall of the material discussed.; In general, the study confirmed previous findings that shared memories become more similar to one another when discussed by a group of people. Moreover, artificially imposed group identifications significantly altered the dynamics of group conversation, the degree to which narrators emerged in the different experimental conditions, and the degree to which participants' postgroup individual recollections converged. However, group membership did not appear to influence the content of postgroup individual recall.