SKOWRONSKI AND WALKERDESCRIBI G AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EVENTS
HOW DESCRIBING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
EVENTS CAN AFFECT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
John J. Skowronski
Northern Illinois University
W. Richard Walker
Winston-Salem State University
In this article we argue that social discourse can affect the structure and content
of autobiographical memory. In making this argument, we review literature
documenting the impact of social factors, including culture, social roles, and
social disclosure frequency, on aspects of autobiographical memory. We also
describe several social norms that govern social discourse and speculate about
the effect that such norms might have on autobiographical memory. In addi-
tion, we review the mental structures and processes that might serve to mediate
the relation between social discourse and autobiographical memory and offer
suggestions about how both social and cognitive factors might be integrated
into a common model accounting for autobiographical memory.
Although autobiographical memory research had always captured the
interest of a few researchers (e.g., Cason, 1932; Colegrove, 1983/1899;
Waldfogel, 1948), the pace of research into this topic accelerated in the
late 1970s and early 1980s. Researchers who had a background in cogni-
tive or experimental psychology published many of the important stud-
ies during this time (Linton, 1986; Neisser, 1978; Thompson, 1982;
Wagenaar, 1986). Consequently, the variables of interest (e.g., delay, re-
hearsal) that were explored in these studies often focused on variables
that are typically important to cognitive psychologists. The influence of
cognitive psychology continues to manifest itself in much of the contem-
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Social Cognition, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2004, pp. 555-590
We would like to thank Charles P. Thompson, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, and Rodney J. Vogl
for their comments made throughout the course of this project.
Address correspondence to John J. Skowronski, Department of Psychology, Northern
Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115; E-mail: jskowron@niu.edu.

porary theory and research that explores autobiographical memory
(e.g., Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000).
However, even within cognitive psychology there has been a consis-
tent, albeit low-level, interest in how variables that tend to be of primary
interest to social psychologists affect autobiographical memory. For ex-
ample, Bartlett’s classic research into memory distortion (1932; for a re-
cent update, see Bergman & Roediger, 1999) grew out of his earlier
interest (1923) in social determinants of remembering and forgetting.
Similarly, Loftus’s well-known research on the misinformation effect
(e.g., Loftus, 1975; Loftus & Loftus, 1980) explored how socially trans-
mitted information conveyed after an event has occurred can cause dis-
tortion in the event memory. Despite its cognitive psychology origins,
Betz, Skowronski, and Ostrom (1996) argued that such research can eas-
ily be viewed through the lens of social psychology. Adopting such a
perspective suggests that classic social psychology persuasion variables
such as the credibility of the speaker, the plausibility of the information,
and the extent to which the post-event information is consensually
shared can work to consolidate or distort event memories (also see
Hoffman, Granhag, Kwong See, & Loftus, 2001; Roediger, Meade, &
Bergman, 2001). For example, recent research shows that although peo-
ple can be persuaded to falsely “recall” fictitious autobiographical
events, the plausibility of the event influences the probability that the
event will be falsely recalled (Mazzoni, Loftus, & Kirsch, 2001;
McDermott & Roediger, 1998; Roediger, et al., 2001; Roediger &
McDermott, 1995).
Moreover, social psychologists did not entirely yield the field to cogni-
tive psychologists in their exploration of how these social variables af-
fected autobiographical memory. Some social psychologists, such as
Mike Ross, conducted influential research during this seminal period.
Ross’s early autobiographical memory studies were stimulated by social
psychologists’ interest in the attitude-behavior relationship and ex-
plored how attitudes might alter recollections of behavior (e.g., Ross,
McFarland, & Fletcher, 1981). At about the same time, Greenwald (1980)
published an influential article on the “totalitarian ego” in which he out-
lined how the self-concept consists of a number of interrelated knowl-
edge structures that, in conjunction with various motivations, served to
direct information processing in such a way as to bias the content of
autobiographical recall.
The linkage between social and cognitive psychology in this area is
further emphasized by the fact that the relation between social interac-
tion and autobiographical memory has emerged as a primary theme in
autobiographical memory research. For example, influenced by think-
ers such as Mead (1934) and by the social-developmental movement
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