Reading "The Bomber Mafia" I caught this interesting term called "transactive memory". I thought I wanted to do some googling about it to understand more about it.
The psychologist Daniel Wegner has this beautiful concept called transactive memory, which is the observation that we don’t just store information in our minds or in specific places. We also store memories and understanding in the minds of the people we love. You don’t need to remember your child’s emotional relationship to her teacher because you know your wife will; you don’t have to remember how to work the remote because you know your daughter will. That’s transactive memory. Little bits of ourselves reside in other people’s minds. Wegner has a heartbreaking riff about what one member of a couple will often say when the other one dies—that some part of him or her died along with the partner. That, Wegner says, is literally true. When your partner dies, everything that you have stored in that person’s brain is gone.
Such specialization reduces the memory load for each individual, yet each individual has access to a larger pool of information collectively. For transactive memory to function effectively, individuals must also have a shared conceptualization of “who knows what” in the group.
Unlike the literal and straightforward ways that computer networks update directories, and locate, store, and retrieve information, transactive memory systems among human agents are often flawed. Transactive memory systems can vary in accuracy (the degree to which group members’ perceptions about other members’ expertise are accurate), sharedness (the degree to which members have a shared representation of who knows what in the group), and validation (the degree to which members accept responsibility for different knowledge areas and participate in the system).
Transactive memory systems can lead to improved group performance on tasks for which groups must process a large amount of information in a short period of time and on tasks that require expertise from many different knowledge domains. However, there may be situations in which too much specialization may impede group performance, for example, when assigned experts are unavailable, unable, or unwilling to contribute their knowledge. Even when specialization leads to better outcomes, some redundancy may be useful. It helps members to communicate more effectively, it can encourage group members to be more accountable to one another, and it can provide a cushion for transitions in relationships when, for example, the designated expert leaves the group.
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/interpersonal-relationships/transactive-memory/
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