Social cryptomnesia

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Social cryptomnesia is a psychological and sociological idea. It is a cognitive bias experienced by entire cultures following social change.

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Cryptomnesia refers to an implicit memory phenomenon of an individual’s false belief that their idea is original; however, in reality, they have previously come across the said idea and have forgotten that they did. [1] Cryptomnesia is likely to occur when there is source confusion, the error in identifying a memory’s source, [1] due to high cognitive load at the time when the idea was first considered. [2] This is in line with the Cognitive Load Theory, [3] suggesting that humans have a limited capacity in their working memory, and when it is overloaded or impacted due to factors like stress, individuals can have the tendency to avoid the source of incoming information. [3] [4]  

Social cryptomnesia is a failure to remember the origin of a change, in which people know that a change has occurred in society, but forget how this change occurred; that is, the steps that were taken to bring this change about, and who took these steps. [5] This may lead to reduced social credit towards the minorities who made major sacrifices that led to the change in societal values. [6]

Minority marginalization

A minority group is defined as any group that is marginalized in the society they live in due to cultural or physical characteristics. They face unfair treatment and are discriminated against. [7] Minority groups in a society can also be referred to as the “subordinate group”, whereas the majority of people are called the “dominant group”. [8] The Scapegoat Theory suggests that dominant groups can position “unfocused aggression” on minorities. [8]

Throughout history, there have been several notable social movements of minorities leading to revolutions; while the revolutions are remembered by the public, those who have been leading the change have often been forgotten. [6] So, the societal system favors the dominant groups without giving credit to minorities. [6] Social cryptomnesia is described as collective oblivion with social control. [9] It causes the changes done by minority groups to be disregarded, which in turn could lead to further disparity within a society. [9]

Psychological theories

There are different possible theories behind this phenomenon explained through ultimate causes.

Moscovici’s minority influence

Previous research done on group conformity showed how individuals are influenced by the choice of the majority. [10] The study proved that individuals conformed to the answers of the group in public but disregarded them in private. [10] Moscovici argues that behavioral style is the source of influence, especially highlighting that the consistent behavior of minorities can affect the majority of the population. [11] [12] He describes four stages of influence: [13]

  1. Revelation: Minority presents their conflicting views to the majority.
  2. Incubation: The majority assesses the arguments of the minority.
  3. Conversion: Those in the majority begin to accept and internalize the arguments of the minority privately.
  4. Innovation: After understanding that others began to share the same views, members of the majority began to publicly acknowledge the views of the minority.

In Moscovici’s four-stage theory, there are two limitations. First of all, it is uncertain how the process from conversion to innovation takes place as at the conversion stage, individuals internalize at a private level. Secondly, the stages end after the fourth one: at this point, the normative position of the majority is eliminated as they have revealed their new views publicly. Historically, it is seen that even with this, the changes that minorities lead can be disregarded. Therefore, Butera et al. (2009) [6] suggests that social cryptomnesia acts as a “fifth stage” of this process.

Social Identity Theory

A related theory could be Social Identity Theory. [14] [15] The theory entails how individuals identify with the groups they belong to, which leads to the idea of social categorisation. [15] The groups one belongs to are in-groups, whereas the ones they do not are the out-groups. In order to maintain self-esteem, people perceive their in-groups as superior. This leads to the discrimination of out-groups. Evidence suggests that social identification affects behavior. [16] In terms of decision-making, individuals conform to the “normative leanings'' of their group. [17] Therefore, it could be that the idea of outgroups of minorities do not yield attention to the changes that minorities make, increasing the chance of the process being forgotten. The idea of “groupthink” [18] supports this argument as it refers to group members accepting a certain conclusion that represents a “group consensus”. However, for “groupthink” to occur, there have to be high levels of cohesiveness, [17] which poses a limitation.

Cultural evolution

One of the factors enabling cultural evolution is transmission. [19] From an evolutionary perspective, cultural transmission occurs when individuals pass on information to other generations through social learning. [20] It could be that social cryptomnesia occurs because of “content-biased cultural transmission”. [21] Sperber (1996) describes the situation as “cultural attraction”, which is how cultural representations are distorted to match the existing cognitive biases. [20] As majorities are more prevalent in terms of making change, individuals could be attributing the idea of a change to the dominant group instead of one of the subordinate ones, explaining the functioning of social cryptomnesia. This is in line with Piaget’s schema theory: individuals perceive the world around them and shape incoming knowledge according to their prior beliefs. [22]

Women's rights

The progress made in the first wave of feminism includes healthcare, education, and the right to vote. These rights are considered to be just by the general population, yet the actions taken by the suffragettes (and suffragists) to get to this point are frequently ignored. [6]

Feminist movements are victims of social cryptomnesia. [23] While women’s rights are now acknowledged in most countries, the process of gaining acknowledgement is not recognized by the general population. Furthermore, women are still alienated within society, suggesting that the majority of society has not yielded adequate attention to these changes. Due to this, in various areas of everyday life, [24] [25] women face gender-based discrimination and negative stereotypes, while sometimes seen as extremists or radical. [23] [26] This may prevent social change from occurring, even when people agree it is necessary. [26]

Social cryptomnesia related to sexism can be reduced with conscientization, [9] which relies on critical reflection on the issue. [27] This technique was used in social and political issues before; [28] thus, the same technique can be adjusted for other minorities in decreasing the effects of social cryptomnesia by conducting further research on it in the future. Nevertheless, since different minorities face varying levels of this phenomenon, this may not be as effective as planned. Additionally, it may be possible to reduce these negative effects of social cryptomnesia by making individuals aware of how social cryptomnesia may contribute to their biases. [9]

Related Research Articles

Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.

The bandwagon effect is the tendency for people to adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. More specifically, it is a cognitive bias by which public opinion or behaviours can alter due to particular actions and beliefs rallying amongst the public. It is a psychological phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases with respect to the proportion of others who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decision-making</span> Cognitive process to choose a course of action or belief

In psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rational or irrational. The decision-making process is a reasoning process based on assumptions of values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker. Every decision-making process produces a final choice, which may or may not prompt action.

Social cognition is a topic within psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.

Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think. In 1958, Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.

  1. Compliance is when people appear to agree with others but actually keep their dissenting opinions private.
  2. Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity.
  3. Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.

In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious. The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion, a phenomenon known as attitude polarization.

In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to "see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances". In other words, they assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population.

In psychology, the Asch conformity experiments or the Asch paradigm were a series of studies directed by Solomon Asch studying if and how individuals yielded to or defied a majority group and the effect of such influences on beliefs and opinions.

In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.

Herd mentality describes how people can be influenced by the majority.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Risk perception</span>

Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since are affected by a wide range of affective, cognitive, contextual, and individual factors. Several theories have been proposed to explain why different people make different estimates of the dangerousness of risks. Three major families of theory have been developed: psychology approaches, anthropology/sociology approaches and interdisciplinary approaches.

Social representations are a system of values, ideas, metaphors, beliefs, and practices that serve to establish social order, orient participants and enable communication among the members of groups and communities. Social representation theory is a body of theory within social psychology and sociological social psychology. It has parallels in sociological theorizing such as social constructionism and symbolic interactionism, and is similar in some ways to mass consensus and discursive psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serge Moscovici</span> Romanian-born French social psychologist

Serge Moscovici was a Romanian-born French social psychologist, director of the Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale, which he co-founded in 1974 at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris. He was a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and Officer of the Légion d'honneur, as well as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Moscovici's son, Pierre Moscovici, was European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs.

Minority influence, a form of social influence, takes place when a member of a minority group influences the majority to accept the minority's beliefs or behavior. This occurs when a small group or an individual acts as an agent of social change by questioning established societal perceptions, and proposing alternative, original ideas which oppose the existing social norms. There are two types of social influence: majority influence and minority influence. Majority influence refers to the majority trying to produce conformity on the minority, while minority influence is converting the majority to adopt the thinking of the minority group. Unlike other forms of influence, minority influence is often thought of as a more innovative form of social change, because it usually involves a personal shift in private opinion. Examples of minority influence include the civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Normative social influence is a type of social influence that leads to conformity. It is defined in social psychology as "...the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them." The power of normative social influence stems from the human identity as a social being, with a need for companionship and association.

Group decision-making is a situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any single individual who is a member of the group. This is because all the individuals and social group processes such as social influence contribute to the outcome. The decisions made by groups are often different from those made by individuals. In workplace settings, collaborative decision-making is one of the most successful models to generate buy-in from other stakeholders, build consensus, and encourage creativity. According to the idea of synergy, decisions made collectively also tend to be more effective than decisions made by a single individual. In this vein, certain collaborative arrangements have the potential to generate better net performance outcomes than individuals acting on their own. Under normal everyday conditions, collaborative or group decision-making would often be preferred and would generate more benefits than individual decision-making when there is the time for proper deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. This can be achieved through the use of committee, teams, groups, partnerships, or other collaborative social processes.

Self-categorization theory is a theory in social psychology that describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms. Although the theory is often introduced as an explanation of psychological group formation, it is more accurately thought of as general analysis of the functioning of categorization processes in social perception and interaction that speaks to issues of individual identity as much as group phenomena. It was developed by John Turner and colleagues, and along with social identity theory it is a constituent part of the social identity approach. It was in part developed to address questions that arose in response to social identity theory about the mechanistic underpinnings of social identification.

Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.

Diversity ideology refers to individual beliefs regarding the nature of intergroup relations and how to improve them in culturally diverse societies. A large amount of scientific literature in social psychology studies diversity ideologies as prejudice reduction strategies, most commonly in the context of racial groups and interracial interactions. In research studies on the effects of diversity ideology, social psychologists have either examined endorsement of a diversity ideology as individual difference or used situational priming designs to activate the mindset of a particular diversity ideology. It is consistently shown that diversity ideologies influence how individuals perceive, judge and treat cultural outgroup members. Different diversity ideologies are associated with distinct effects on intergroup relations, such as stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup equality, and intergroup interactions from the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. Beyond intergroup consequences, diversity ideology also has implications on individual outcomes, such as whether people are open to cultural fusion and foreign ideas, which in turn predict creativity.

References

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  8. 1 2 "11.1 Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups - Introduction to Sociology 3e | OpenStax". openstax.org. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
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  11. ↑ Moscovici, S.; Lage, E.; Naffrechoux, M. (1969). "Influence of a Consistent Minority on the Responses of a Majority in a Color Perception Task". Sociometry. 32 (4): 365–380. doi:10.2307/2786541. ISSN   0038-0431. JSTOR   2786541. PMID   5373094.
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  13. ↑ Moscovici, Serge (1985), Avermaet, Eddy van; Mugny, Gabriel; Moscovici, Serge (eds.), "Innovation and minority influence", Perspectives on Minority Influence, European Studies in Social Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 9–52, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511897566.003, ISBN   978-0-521-24695-8 , retrieved 2023-03-28
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  15. 1 2 Turner, J. C.; Brown, R. J.; Tajfel, H. (April 1979). "Social comparison and group interest in ingroup favouritism". European Journal of Social Psychology. 9 (2): 187–204. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420090207 . ISSN   0046-2772.
  16. ↑ Drury, John; Cocking, Chris; Reicher, Steve (September 2009). "Everyone for themselves? A comparative study of crowd solidarity among emergency survivors". British Journal of Social Psychology. 48 (3): 487–506. doi:10.1348/014466608x357893. ISSN   0144-6665. PMID   18789185.
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  19. ↑ Mesoudi, Alex; Whiten, Andrew; Laland, Kevin N. (2004). "Perspective:is Human Cultural Evolution Darwinian? Evidence Reviewed from the Perspective of the Origin of Species". Evolution. 58 (1): 1–11. doi:10.1554/03-212. ISSN   0014-3820. PMID   15058714. S2CID   198156997.
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  21. ↑ Berl, Richard E. W.; Samarasinghe, Alarna N.; Roberts, Seán G.; Jordan, Fiona M.; Gavin, Michael C. (2021). "Prestige and content biases together shape the cultural transmission of narratives". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 3: e42. doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.37. hdl: 21.11116/0000-0007-5F89-5 . ISSN   2513-843X. S2CID   241860966.
  22. ↑ Drescher, Gary L. (1993), Hanson, Stephen José; Remmele, Werner; Rivest, Ronald L. (eds.), "The schema mechanism", Machine Learning: From Theory to Applications: Cooperative Research at Siemens and MIT, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, vol. 661, pp. 125–138, doi:10.1007/3-540-56483-7_27, ISBN   978-3-540-47568-2 , retrieved 2023-03-28
  23. 1 2 Vernet, Jean-Pierre; Butera, Fabrizio (March 2005). "Women, women's rights and feminist movements". Social Science Information. 44 (1): 175–188. doi:10.1177/0539018405050465. ISSN   0539-0184. S2CID   144371388.
  24. ↑ McKinley, Sophia K.; Wang, Linda J.; Gartland, Rajshri M.; Westfal, Maggie L.; Costantino, Christina L.; Schwartz, Dana; Merrill, Andrea L.; Petrusa, Emil; Lillemoe, Keith; Phitayakorn, Roy (November 2019). ""Yes, I'm the Doctor": One Department's Approach to Assessing and Addressing Gender-Based Discrimination in the Modern Medical Training Era". Academic Medicine. 94 (11): 1691–1698. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002845 . ISSN   1040-2446. PMID   31274522. S2CID   195806429.
  25. ↑ Lambrecht, Anja; Tucker, Catherine E. (2018-03-09). "Algorithmic Bias? An Empirical Study into Apparent Gender-Based Discrimination in the Display of STEM Career Ads". Rochester, NY. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2852260. S2CID   201378649. SSRN   2852260.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  26. 1 2 Bashir, Nadia Y.; Lockwood, Penelope; Chasteen, Alison L.; Nadolny, Daniel; Noyes, Indra (2013-09-16). "The ironic impact of activists: Negative stereotypes reduce social change influence". European Journal of Social Psychology. 43 (7): 614–626. doi:10.1002/ejsp.1983. ISSN   0046-2772.
  27. ↑ Montero, Maritza (2011-11-13), "Conscientization", in Christie, Daniel J. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. wbepp060, doi:10.1002/9780470672532.wbepp060, ISBN   978-1-4051-9644-4 , retrieved 2023-03-28
  28. ↑ Butera, Fabrizio; Vernet, Jean-Pierre; Vala, Jorge (2017-04-07), Papastamou, Stamos; Gardikiotis, Antonis; Prodromitis, Gerasimos (eds.), "Influencing people's (negative) attitudes towards active minorities", Majority and Minority Influence (1 ed.), Routledge, pp. 158–172, doi:10.4324/9781315666648-8, ISBN   978-1-315-66664-8 , retrieved 2023-03-28
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