Person Memory and Memorability: A Round Robin Analysis

Abstract

When one person remembers another, which does the memory more strongly reflect: the rememberer's ability or the target person's memorability? In a group setting, subjects took turns answering questions aloud. Afterwards, each subject tried to recall what the other subjects had said; 2 months later, they tried to recognize one another's remarks. By partitioning variance in the resulting memories, we conclude that recall for remarks reflects differences among rememberers, and that the recognition of remarks reflects differences among target persons. Correlations reveal an inverse relationship between memory and memorability: The more recognizable a subject's remarks, the poorer is the subject's recall. We present an allocation-of-effort interpretation for these results, then comment on out method for studying social memory.