How does social competition affect true and false recognition?

Abstract

Memory is highly susceptible to distortions, which can exert serious consequences in daily life. Despite this, we still know little about the role of factors that comprise social contexts in which memory processes occur. In the present study, we attempted to address this issue by examining how social competition influences true and false recognition. Participants performed a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm designed to lure them into producing both true and false recognition either in competition against or independently of another person. We found that participants in the competition group showed lower levels of true and false recognition than those in the control group. Signal-detection analyses revealed that participants in both groups showed equivalent memory sensitivity for true recognition, while those in the competition group exhibited a decreased sensitivity for false recognition, which implies enhanced item-specific encoding during social competition. Moreover, participants in the competition group showed a more conservative response bias for both true and false recognition at retrieval than those in the control group, indicating a shift towards conservatism in decision strategy for both true and false recognition during social competition. The results provide compelling evidence for a decision-based reduction of true recognition and both encoding-based and decision-based reductions of false recognition under competitive contexts. Therefore, these novel findings may have implications both for understanding the powerful role of social competition on true and false memories and for understanding the potential role of social competition on other aspects of memory processes.

How do outcome-based competitive relationships shape future risky cooperation?

“…Participants were randomly assigned to receive one of four types of outcome feedback (win vs. loss vs. uncertain competitive outcome vs. control). In line with the protocol adopted by the recent study (Liu et al, 2021), we used a standard version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959;Roediger & McDermott, 1995) as the competitive task. This task included three phases: a study phase, a distractor phase and a test phase.…”

“…We calculated that, to maintain 80% power for an alpha level of 0.05, then the sample size needed to detect a medium effect size (Cohen's f = 0.25) (Cohen, 1988(Cohen, , 1992 was at least 27 participants per condition. We based the assumption of the medium effect size on previous research regarding the impact of competition on social behavior (Balas & Thomas, 2015;Liu et al, 2021). In reality, we recruited 41 participants per condition in order to ensure robustness of the present study.…”

“…Consistent with a recent study (Liu et al, 2021), we administered several questionnaires with the aim of controlling for potential individual differences and how they might relate to task performance. These questionnaires comprised of the Chinese version of the Self-Report Altruism Scale (C-SRA) to examine altruistic attitudes among participants (Tang et al, 2011), the Chinese version of the Cooperative and Competitive Orientation Scale (C-CCO) to assess how inclined participants were to compete (Chen et al, 2011) and the Chinese version of the Domain-Speci c Risk-Taking Scale (C-DOSPERT) to test risk-taking inclinations among participants (Hu & Xie, 2012).…”

Inter-Group Face Recognition Bias Was Modulated by the Group Status

“…And the competitive relationship signaled by group labels was not limited to academic or sports reputation, but geographical distance and physical proximity to each other (Van Bavel and Cunningham, 2012;Ng et al, 2016;Xiao et al, 2016;Yan et al, 2017). Since competitive opponents represent a relevant source of information or threat within the social environment, observers would modulate the gazing behavior, attention resource, and memory (Kilduff et al, 2010;Ciardo et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2020). There is reason to doubt that only perceived competitive (or rivalry) relationships may play an important role in modulating an inter-group recognition bias.…”

Feelings of Contrast at Test Reduce False Memory in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott Paradigm

“…Numerous experimental manipulations have revealed that falsely remembered critical lures present highly compelling memorial evidence of the occurrence of the event (e.g., Beato et al, 2013 ; Boldini et al, 2013 ; Thakral et al, 2019 ; Brainerd et al, 2020 ; Howe and Akhtar, 2020 ; H. Liu et al, 2020 ; Beato and Arndt, 2021 ; Huff et al, 2021 ; Z. Liu et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2021 ).…”