Stories, Statistics, and Memory

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Graeber, Thomas; Roth, Christopher; Zimmermann, Florian
• 署名单位: Harvard University; University of Cologne; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); University of Bonn
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjae020
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 2181-2225

摘要

For many decisions, we encounter relevant information over the course of days, months, or years. We consume such information in various forms, including stories (qualitative content about individual instances) and statistics (quantitative data about collections of observations). This article proposes that information type-story versus statistic-shapes selective memory. In controlled experiments, we document a pronounced story-statistic gap in memory: the average impact of statistics on beliefs fades by 73% over the course of a day, but the impact of a story fades by only 32%. Guided by a model of selective memory, we disentangle different mechanisms and document that similarity relationships drive this gap. Recall of a story increases when its qualitative content is more similar to a memory prompt. Irrelevant information in memory that is similar to the prompt, on the other hand, competes for retrieval with relevant information, impeding successful recall.