Age and Gender Differences in the Borrowing of Personal Stories.

Abstract

Background: In prior research, about half of undergraduate students claimed to have "borrowed" a story, by telling someone else's autobiographical memory as if it was their own. Given that borrowing stories often involves intentional fabrication, and given that there are age-related declines in lying, we hypothesized that reports of intentionally borrowing stories should decline with age.

Methods: We recruited participants who ranged in age from 18 to 86 and asked them to complete an online retrospective survey about borrowing stories.

Results: Consistent with our hypothesis, older age was associated with lower reports of borrowing stories. Furthermore, among people who did report borrowing a story, older age was associated with less frequent story borrowing and less recent story borrowing.

Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of using age-diverse samples when examining social memory phenomena. Findings based upon undergraduate students do not always replicate in other age groups.