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Social Psychology and Memory
From: Cambridge University Press
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Sir Frederic Bartlett |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Memory is much more than a self-contained mental process: social and environmental factors play a significant part in how well or how badly we recall events and facts. In this brief extract from the larger argument of his 1932 work Remembering, Sir Frederic Bartlett recounts experiments from different cultures which demonstrate the way in which social psychology impinges on the workings of memory. |
 ome years ago the Paramount Chief of the Swazi people, accompanied by several of his leading men, visited England for the purpose of attempting to obtain a final settlement of a long-standing land dispute. When the party returned, there was naturally some curiosity among the British settlers in Swaziland concerning what were the main points of recall by the native group of their visit to England. The one thing that remained most firmly and vividly fixed in the recollection of the Swazi chiefs was their picture of the English policeman, regulating the road traffic with uplifted hand. [Note that this was written in 1932.] |
Why should this simple action have made so profound an impression? Certainly not merely because it was taken as a symbol of power. Many other illustrations of power, far more striking to the European mind, had been seen and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. The Swazi greets his fellow, or his visitor, with uplifted hand. Here was the familiar gesture, warm with friendliness in a foreign country, and at the same time arresting in its consequences. It was one of the few things they saw that fitted immediately into their own well-established social framework, and so it produced a quick impression and a lasting effect. |
I take another case from the same community. Even acute observers often assert of the Swazi the same kind of observation that has been made of the Bantu in general: "The Bantu mind is endowed with a wonderful memory". Yet this sort of statement never seems to have been submitted to any careful experimental test. If such tests were carried out, it would most certainly be found that individual differences are about as pronounced as they are in a European community, and, a fact more to our present purpose, that the lines of accurate and full recall are very largely indeed, just as they are with us, a matter of social organisation, with its accepted scales of value. |
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| The possession and care of cattle was central to many of the most persistent and important social customs in Swazi culture in 1932. | |
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I myself, having listened to numerous stories about the marvellous word-perfect memory of the Swazi from his childhood up, and having been credibly informed that I could test these stories, with complete certainty of confirmation, upon any person I liked, arranged a simple experiment. Choosing at random a boy of eleven or twelve years of age, a native interpreter and myself concocted a brief message of about twenty-five words which the boy was to take from one end to another of a village. The journey took him about two minutes. The message was given to him very carefully twice over, and he did not know that he was being kept under observation. He was given a lively inducement to be accurate. He delivered the message with three important omissions, doing certainly no better than an English boy of the same age might do. Several times also I tried, with natives of varied ages and both sexes, common observation and description tests, but with modifications so as to make them of greater intrinsic interest to a native observer. The results were much the same as they would have been for similar tests in a typical European group, neither better nor worse. |
Nevertheless, it is not difficult to show that the common belief has some ground. For example, once, when I was talking with a prominent Scottish settler in Swaziland who has an extensive and sound knowledge of the native, he repeated the usual stories of exceedingly accurate and detailed memory. I told him of my own tests, and he at once agreed that his assertions held good only provided the native were taken in his own preferred fields of interest. Now most Swazi culture revolves around the possession and care of cattle. Cattle are the centre of many of the most persistent and important social customs. The settler himself suggested a test case. He guaranteed that his herdsman would give me a prompt and absolutely literal description of all the cattle which he, the owner, had bought a year earlier. The herdsman had been with him while the transactions were completed, and had then driven the beasts back to the main farm. Immediately after the purchase, the cattle had been dispersed to different places and the herdsman had seen them no more. The settler himself had his own written records of the deals, and naturally could not himself remember the details without looking them up. It was arranged that he should not himself look at his records, or interview the herdsman. At the moment, the native was found to be at a 'beer-drink', and inaccessible in more ways than one. The next day, however, the man was sent to me. He walked some twenty miles and brought with him the sealed book of accounts, which, in any case, he was not able to read. He knew nothing whatever of the reason for his journey. I asked him for a list of the cattle bought by his employer the year previously, together with whatever detail he cared to give. Squatting on the ground, apparently wholly unmoved, he rapidly recited the list. This was as follows:
From Magama Sikindsa, one black ox for £4;
From Mloyeni Sifundra, one young black ox for £2;
From Mbimbi Maseko, one young black ox, with a white brush to its tail, for £2;
From Gampoka Likindsa, one young white bull, with small red spots, for £1;
From Mapsini Ngomane and Mpohlonde Maseko, one red cow, one black heifer, one very young black bull for £3 in all;
From Makanda, one young grey ox, about two years old, for £3;
From Lolalela, one spotted five year old cow, white and black, for £3, which was made up of two bags of grain and £1;
From Mampini Mavalane, one black polly cow, with grey on the throat, for £3;
From Ndoda Kadeli, one young red heifer, the calf of a red cow, and with a white belly, for £1.
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My notes, made at the time, say that the herdsman, a native of something over forty years, "showed no hesitation, no apparent interest, and certainly no excitement. He seemed to be reciting a well-known exercise and in no way reconstructing the deals on the basis of a few definitely remembered details". |
The list was correct in every detail but two. The price of the second black ox mentioned was £1. 10s., and the "black" heifer from Mpohlonde Maseko was described in the book as "red". Against these trifling errors, it must be remembered that the herdsman had himself no say in the price of the beasts, and had merely overheard the bargains made by his master; and further that native colour names are apt to be rather widely ambiguous. |
It seems certain that this was in no way an isolated and remarkable case. The Swazi herdsman has generally an accurate and prodigiously retentive capacity to recall the individual characteristics of his beasts. An animal may stray and get mixed up with other herds. It may be away for a very long time. However long the interval, if the owner comes with a description of the missing beast, his word is almost never questioned, and he is peaceably allowed to drive the animal back. It is true that, in spite of this, cattle were formerly all earmarked--a custom that appears to have fallen into disuse except in the case of the Royal herds--but altogether apart from these special marks, by common consent, the native herdsman always remembers his beasts individually. |
And why should he not? Just as the policeman's uplifted hand was noteworthy because of the familiar social background, so the individual peculiarities of the cattle can be recalled freshly and vividly, because herds, and all dealings with them, are of tremendous social importance. |
This particular small experiment had an interesting sequel, which is perhaps worth putting on record. As I was travelling along the East coast of Africa later, I fell to discussing this and other instances of native remembering with a mining engineer who had done a great amount of prospecting work in those regions. He was inclined to think somewhat lightly of all such feats, and said they could be paralleled easily by almost any person of strong interests.  Rather more than a year earlier he had been prospecting on the border of the Belgian Congo. He had then, in the course of his work, made a sketch map of a certain district. The work was not of special note to him at the time, and he had not looked at the map since. He now volunteered to reproduce it absolutely accurately from memory. He set to work at once, and handed me the result. Some considerable time afterwards he found his original sketch-plan and sent it on to me. The two maps are here reproduced in all their essential features. |
Undoubtedly the later one, reproduced entirely by recall and without any possible reference to the original drawing or other data, is a remarkably good effort, though there are a lot of omissions and some changes. |
The most interesting difference was, in fact, one that cannot be immediately demonstrated, but one which will be familiar to all persons who have watched any considerable number of experiments on recall. In the case of the map, there was none of that relatively effortless, recitative, copying manner which marked the recall of the native. The plan was built up bit by bit, a detail here, a filling up there, then another key detail and so on. The whole process had every appearance of a genuine construction. |
Now of course it would be absurd to maintain that the socially determined recall is always predominantly of the first, the recitative, type; while remembering which is directed by individual interests is predominantly of the second, the constructive type. Indeed the social determination of recall often affords just the basis for that constructiveness which has been found already to characterise many instances of recall. Here I am concerned only with the immediate facts, and there appears no room for doubt that the herdsman's remembering of his beasts was directly motivated by the important social functions of cattle among this native group. |
Photograph of Swazi cattle courtesy of Lowell Boileau, "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit," http://bhere.com/ruins. |
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