The influence of social, para‐social, and nonsocial misleading post‐event sources on memory performance

Abstract

Misinformation encountered after witnessing an event is known to influence subsequent memory reports about this event. In most research, misleading information was introduced impersonally, for example, by means of a written description, but it is now well established that delivering it in a social interaction is effective as well. Less is known about the relative effectiveness of impersonal post-event misinformation compared with a socially presented one. The present research provides a direct empirical comparison between social, para-social, and impersonal methods of delivering misinformation. Results indicate that the way in which post-event information is provided does not affect the number of false recall items, source monitoring, or remember-know distinction, with a high Bayesian probability of the obtained no-difference effects. Results show that the social conformity factor does not significantly influence the impact of misleading post-event information. The paper also provides a theoretical comparison of the two effects.

Interrogative suggestibility in the elderly

“…Consistent with previous studies [28-30, 34, 35, 85-90], the present study found that elderly participants scored lower on memory and intelligence measures and showed a related poor performance on IS variables. These findings confirm the association-well-known in the literature [83, for a review]-between Yield score and cognitive factors, underlining that older people tend to have reduced memory and greater suggestibility than younger persons, due to a cognitive ability and a tendency to become more confused and less certain following misleading questions [18,37,91,92].…”

Reinforced self‐affirmation as a method for reducing eyewitness memory conformity: An experimental examination using a modified MORI technique

“…Some even merged memory conformity and the misinformation effect in the title of their paper (Wright et al, 2000, “ Memory conformity : Exploring misinformation effects when presented by another person ”). Szpitalak, Polak, Polczyk, and Dukała (2015) compared three ways of delivering misinformation: impersonal—a typed summary of the original material (most often used in research on the misinformation effect); para‐social—a hand‐written summary, seemingly created and signed by another participant and social—delivered by the confederate. Using the Bayesian method, Szpitalak et al (2015) found no differences in the number of answers consistent with misinformation delivered via all of these three methods.…”

“…Szpitalak, Polak, Polczyk, and Dukała (2015) compared three ways of delivering misinformation: impersonal—a typed summary of the original material (most often used in research on the misinformation effect); para‐social—a hand‐written summary, seemingly created and signed by another participant and social—delivered by the confederate. Using the Bayesian method, Szpitalak et al (2015) found no differences in the number of answers consistent with misinformation delivered via all of these three methods. Similarly, Meade and Roediger (2002) found no significant difference between social and para‐social conditions, and nor did Blank et al (2013).…”

Memory, metamemory, and social cues: Between conformity and resistance.

“…For example, some research on the misinformation effect suggests that misleading suggestions might be more readily incorporated into people's memory reports if they are introduced in an interaction with an actual person than if they are introduced in a postevent narrative prepared by the experimenter (e.g., Gabbert et al, 2004;Paterson & Kemp, 2006). However, other studies have shown similar degrees of conformity when misinformation was introduced in a face-toface interaction and in a written format (e.g., Meade & Roediger, 2002, Experiment 4;Szpitalak, Polak, Polczyk, & Dukała, 2015), and some have even found greater conformity when a written statement was provided (Blank et al, 2013). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”