Best Friends Build Shared Memory Networks

The Atlantic:

I’ve known my two best friends since 9th grade. In that time, a lot has happened, and I’ve forgotten a lot of it. It’s not unusual now for one of them to say “Remember in high school, when this happened?” and for me to reply “Well now I do.” They’re always reminding me of things I’ve forgotten. They’re an extra hard drive for my limited memory capacity.

In science, this is known as a transactive memory system. Transactive memory systems (TMS) are repositories of knowledge that are shared between two or more people. A shared memory of events, like with me and my friends, above, can be part of it, but it’s also a way of calling up facts that other people know. If you say “Oh, what’s the movie that starts with that whistling cartoon rooster?” and I say “Robin Hood,” that’s transactive memory. You have access to my knowledge, and vice versa. But, it only works if we trust each other that we both know what we’re talking about, and that we know we can call on each other for the knowledge if we need it.

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“We found that the longer they were friends, the stronger these transactive memory systems were in the friendship,” says Nicole Iannone, a professor of psychology at Penn State University and lead author of the study. “And then trust was really important—the more trust you have in your friendship, the stronger your transactive memory system was.”

Read the whole story: The Atlantic