Interpersonal memory monitoring judgments and social attitude towards narrators as a function of the recollective qualities of their memories

In everyday conversations, other people tell us memories about events they experienced, and this can support vicarious learning and decision making. However, memories are not always true or faithful to what really happened. We assessed whether the richness of perceptual and contextual details in episodic autobiographical memories influenced how individuals rated the degree of veracity and fidelity of others' memory and whether these interpersonal memory monitoring ratings were associated with social attitude towards the narrator. The results showed that raters judged narrators as having more accurate and faithful memories of past events when their recollections were richly detailed than when their memories lacked detail. Moreover, higher interpersonal memory monitoring judgments were associated with more trust and empathy felt towards the narrator and more willingness to interact with them, suggesting a role for interpersonal memory monitoring in social bonding.