“I trust you if your memory is detailed”: Interpersonal memory fidelity judgments and social bonding

Episodic memory is thought to serve social functions. Here, we focused on the extent to which a person thinks another person’s memory is faithful to what happened and the link between these judgments and social bonding. We assessed whether the quality of the recollection (detailed versus general) of past events influenced how individuals aged between 18 and 41 years old rated the degree of fidelity of others’ memory and whether ratings of memory fidelity were associated with social attitudes towards the narrator. In two experiments (Ns = 59 and 40), we found that participants judged memories to match more closely what really happened when the memories contained many specific details compared to when memories were more general. Moreover, higher memory fidelity judgments were associated with more trust and empathy felt towards the narrator and more willingness to interact with him/her, suggesting a role for interpersonal memory monitoring in social bonding.