Adopting a fictitious autobiography: fabrication inflation or deflation?

Riesthuis, Paul; Otgaar, Henry; Mangiulli, Ivan; Tauzia, Romane de

doi:10.1080/09658211.2020.1771371

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The creation of a false alibi aligns mostly with fabrication, thereby referring to the creation of an alternative detail (e.g., fabricating that there was a gun at the scene of an unarmed robbery) or version of what truly happened (e.g., fabricating having played poker with friends at home at the time of the crime). As with fabrication, creating a false alibi might be based on prior experience (e.g., where the suspect was the day before at that time), what the suspect normally does (e.g., "Wednesday nights I usually play football"), or is completely made up (see Riesthuis et al, 2020). However, creating a false alibi focuses specifically on the suspect's perspective and the whereabouts at the time of the crime.…”

Section: Lying and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating a false alibi leads to errors of commission and omission

Riesthuis

Otgaar

Cort

et al. 2022

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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A suspect of a crime can avoid legal repercussions by creating a false alibi. We examined whether creating such a false alibi can have adverse effects on memory. To do so, participants watched a mock crime video and were either instructed to create a false alibi or to provide an honest account for what they actually saw in the video. After a 2-day and 1-month delay, all participants were instructed to come forward with the truth using a free recall task. Participants who initially created a false alibi had more commission errors after a 2-day and 1-month delay (vs. truth telling participants). Moreover, participants who created a false alibi reported fewer correct details after a 2-day and 1-month delay (vs. truth telling participants). Our study suggests that like other types of deception, creating a false alibi can elicit memory undermining effects in the form of commission and omission errors.

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Section: Lying and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating a false alibi leads to errors of commission and omission

Riesthuis

Otgaar

Cort

et al. 2022

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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“…Violent offenders often claim memory loss in an attempt to avoid legal responsibility or obstruct police investigations ( Cima et al, 2002 ; Jelicic, 2018 ). Equally, some other offenders may come up with a fabricated version of their crime ( Riesthuis et al, 2020 ). Moreover, victims of sexual abuse sometimes deny that the criminal act took place ( Otgaar et al, 2016a ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More Lies Lead to More Memory Impairments in Daily Life

Liu

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have demonstrated that lying can undermine memory and that its memory-undermining effects could be modulated by the cognitive resources required to tell lies. We extended the investigation of the memory-undermining effect by using a daily life setting in which participants were highly involved in a mock shopping task. Participants were randomly assigned to truth-telling, denying or mixed lying conditions. After finishing the shopping task, participants were told that two people wanted to know about their shopping lists and would ask them some questions in an interview. During the interview, participants were asked whether each of ten items were on the shopping list, five of which were randomly selected from the shopping list, while the other five were not sold in the store. In answering the interview questions, the truth-telling group was asked to respond honestly, the denying group was asked to give denial responses, and the mixed lying group was asked to respond deceptively. Thus, the denying group told five lies and the mixed lying group told ten lies in the interview. The item memory test, source memory test and destination memory test were given in an orderly manner 48 h after the interview. We found that the mixed lying group, rather than the denying group, forgot the lies they told in the interview and mistakenly believed they had lied about something that they had not lied about. Moreover, the mixed lying group retained fewer memories about the person they responded to than the honest group. In addition, participants in the mixed lying group had more non-believed memories than those in the truth-telling group in both item and source memory tests. We conclude that more lies could result in more memory disruptions in daily life.

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“…Furthermore, research on fabrication has shown that people can increase their belief after lying (Polage, 2004). More specifically, studies have demonstrated that when people fabricated events that they previously indicated to be unlikely to have occurred, they can start to believe that the events actually did occur (Polage, 2004(Polage, , 2012; but see also Riesthuis et al, 2020). Collectively, the results converge towards the idea that lying and memory are intimately related.…”

Section: Lying and Memorymentioning

confidence: 72%

Public beliefs on the relationship between lying and memory

Riesthuis

Otgaar

Battista

et al. 2021

Psychology, Crime & Law

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In two studies, we surveyed the beliefs of undergraduate students (Study 1) and the general public (Study 2) about deceptive behavior, memory functioning, and the effects of lying on memory. We compared participants' beliefs with the current memory and deception literature. Overall, participants in both studies believed that different types of lies (i.e. false denials, feigning amnesia, fabrication) would elicit different memory impairing effects, although they did not know what specific kind of memory impairment (e.g. forgetting, false memory). In line with previous experimental studies, participants experienced difficulties in retrieving memories after falsely denying or feigning amnesia. Moreover, participants believed that lying would impact other people's memory such as that people would start to believe in their own lies. Meanwhile, they also indicated that these effects would be minimal for themselves. Interestingly, our results showed that false denials are used quite frequently in daily life. Finally, we found that undergraduate students' beliefs about memory were in line with scientific evidence, while the general public continues to have erroneous beliefs about memory. When the general public plays a role in the courtroom (e.g. jury members), we recommend involving memory experts in the assessment of reliability of statements when lying was involved.

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Adopting a fictitious autobiography: fabrication inflation or deflation?

Cited by 11 publications

References 37 publications

Creating a false alibi leads to errors of commission and omission

Creating a false alibi leads to errors of commission and omission

More Lies Lead to More Memory Impairments in Daily Life

Public beliefs on the relationship between lying and memory

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