Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In social network research, free recall name generators are central tools for measuring individuals' perceptions of their social relationships. This study addresses the patterns that individuals exhibit when recalling their social relationships. Specifically, it examines the influence of social contexts, groups, and demographic factors on the order and relative sequences in which individuals are named. By analyzing responses of a friendship name generator in a longitudinal dataset of over 1000 students from the Swiss StudentLife study, we aim to shed light on the cognitive patterns that govern the recall of social bonds. The results shed light on how cognitive mechanisms shape perceived social networks and highlighted the importance of strong relations, similarity in characteristics, and group structures for their recall. The results show that memory is strongly influenced not only by the relationship between the nominator and the nominated person but also by the relationship between the nominated persons.