Updating social knowledge via episodic memory prediction errors.

The article investigates how episodic memory encoding influences the updating of social schemas—mental representations of others' traits and expected behaviors—particularly when new information contradicts prior impressions. Across two behavioral experiments with healthy young adults, participants formed positive or negative impressions of social targets and later encoded narratives depicting these targets engaging in behaviors either congruent or incongruent with their initial schemas. Results showed that the strength of memory for these narratives predicted changes in social schemas, with a notable finding that negative schemas were selectively updated toward more positive impressions when participants strongly remembered incongruent positive information. This suggests that episodic memory plays a crucial role in modifying social expectations, especially by enabling individuals to revise negative views of others in a more favorable direction.