Age and Gender Differences in the Borrowing of Personal Stories

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.

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

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.

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.