Procedures around interviewing a police officer after a shooting have recently come under increased scrutiny. Some argue the officers should be allowed to view available video footage from body cameras and wait two to three days to de-stress before being interviewed. While viewing the video first may increase accuracy for details present in the footage, it may also cause forgetting or distortion for other parts of the situation not captured on camera, including the officer's perception and construal of the situation. Additionally, memory is likely to decay over any delay from a waiting period, with little support for the claim that a long de-stressing period will improve accuracy compared to an immediate report. Though this is a complex policy matter with many considerations, these procedures may do more harm than good when it comes to preserving the most accurate and helpful memory from the police officer.
Retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) refers to the finding that immediately recalling the details of a witnessed event can increase susceptibility to later misinformation. In three experiments, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of the role that retrieval plays in the RES paradigm. Consistent with past research, initial testing did increase susceptibility to misinformation - but only for those who failed to detect discrepancies between the original event and the post-event misinformation. In all three experiments, subjects who retrospectively detected discrepancies in the post-event narratives were more resistant to misinformation than those who did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, having subjects concurrently assess the consistency of the misinformation narratives negated the RES effect. Interestingly, in Experiments 2 and 3, subjects who had retrieval practice and detected discrepancies were more likely to endorse misinformation than control subjects who detected discrepancies. These results call attention to limiting conditions of the RES effect and highlight the complex relationship between retrieval practice, discrepancy detection, and misinformation endorsement.
The current study investigates how people respond to a climate science consensus statement embedded within a news article. Participants ( N = 1,048) were randomly assigned to read a news article about climate change, read the same article with a scientific consensus message included, read a simple consensus statement, or a control condition. Participants in consensus conditions had increased perceptions of scientific agreement compared with those who did not receive consensus information. Moreover, the article was similarly effective as an overt consensus statement. However, neither consensus statement affected other climate change attitudes, suggesting the effect may be limited to consensus perceptions.
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