The effect of prejudiced memory in strategies for social interaction

Abstract

In human society, the majority of individuals try to achieve objectives that are individual to them, carrying this out, in the majority of cases, in an independent manner. It has in fact been repeat edly verified that some individuals are able to function as catalysts, introducing ideas and technology that go against the ideological currents that govern their social relationships. A variety of factors can be indicated as being partly responsible for this capacity for innovation and social adaptation, one of them being the perpetuation of collective memory by means of written texts, the press, and by all the different new types of media that we have today at our disposal, and which are used by certain individuals in determined contexts to obtain some type of advantage. What effect, however, would pre judice have when a pplied to strategies of interaction in a social network? Prejudice is something that is generally considered to be pejorative. Taking the free circulation of information amongst individuals within a social network as a basic premise, would it be possible to affirm that we would always achieve improved performance of society as a whole when the collective memory is loaded with prejudice? This work attempts to provide an answer to that question, analysing the relationship between the efficiency of a social network and the memories of the individuals who make it up, when the network itself is not immune from information that is (potentially) incorrect.