Week 3 reading- Planting Misinformation in the Human Mind Flashcards
What is the misinformation effect?
Impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to misleading information
When are people most prone to misinformation?
-Once enough time has passed for the original memory to fade
-If you get someone drunk or use hypnosis during encoding of the memory they are particular vulnerable to post-event misinformation. Note: Sometimes to is enough to just make them think they were drunk- trust their own memories less
What is the discrepancy detection principle?
-A theory to explain when people are most vulnerable to misinformation
- “recollections are more likely to change if a person does not immediately detect discrepancies between misinformation and memory for the original event “
What view on warnings of misinformation does the article take?
-Warning people in advance of misinformation is successful in some cases: it helps them resist misinformation (suppression hypothesis). This is because they scrutinize post-event information more and therefore can uncover how it differs from their original memory.
-Warning people after misinformation is not effective as misinformation has already been incorporated into the memory trace.
When are post misinformation warnings likely to be the most effective?
-When misinformation is in a relatively low state of accessibility i.e. if presented if misinformation many times since the original memory it is in a high state of accessibility and very unlikely to be discounted as a result of the ‘warning’
Does the misinformation effect equally affect everyone?
-No, some people are more vulnerable than others
-Young children + elderly are particularly suspectable (may be to do with lack of cognitive resources to pay attention during encoding and to scrutinise post event information)
What personality traits have been associated with increased vulnerability to the misinformation effect?
-Empathy
-Absorption
-Self monitoring: if individuals self report more lapses in memory they are more likely to be suspectable to misinformation as they have less confidence in their memory to begin with
Why is studying the misinformation effect in animals challenging? How has this been overcome with pigeons?
-It’s hard to gauge whether the misinformation has had an effect- we can’t get an animal to verbally report what they remember
-Pigeons were trained to peck at a light of a certain colour (red). Misinformation= presented with different coloured light afterwards (green). Test= peck the original colour light to get food (no effect of misinformation) or peck the ‘new’ coloured light and get no food (effect of misinformation).
The fact that both pigeons and humans shown the misinformation effect suggests…
The misinformation effect is not just as a result of a demand characteristic: i.e. pigeons, unlike humans, have no desire to please the experimenter and therefore the misinformation effect is genuine.
What is the difference between retrograde inference and the misinformation effect?
-Retrograde inference= just a disruption in memory, there is no biasing effect (Chat gtp: Retrograde inference refers to the process of inferring or deducing past events or information based on current or subsequent knowledge)
-Misinformation effect= the post event information is biasing memory and coincidentally making it worse
What are the 3 alternate views in what the fate of the original memory is after misinformation?
-Theory 1: misinformation doesn’t cause
impairment in existing memory instead it only influences those who never encoded the detail/ memory to begin with. So the original memory does not exist!
-Theory 2: individuals have both the original memory and the post-event information accessible they simply make a (wrong) choice that the misinformation is more likely to be correct. This is known as the deliberation hypothesis.
-Theory 3: the original memory is altered by the post event misinformation
How might the nature of misinformation memories be different to that of true event memories?
-Researchers compared the memories of participant who had seen a yield sign in a stimulated traffic accident to the memories of other subjects who had not seen the sign but had it suggested to them (misinformation)
-Verbal description for ‘unreal’ memories were longer, contained more verbal hedges (used to express uncertainty i.e. I think, maybe), more references to cognitive operations (language related to thinking/ mental processes) + fewer sensory details
-Real memories are qualitatively different to ones caused as a result of the misinformation effect?
What is the source misattribution affect as proposed by Zaragoza and Lane (1994)?
-Source misattribution affect is when individuals attribute information to the wrong source
-The idea with the misinformation effect is that individuals may have true memories for a thing that is given in the post-even misinformation from another time and simply attribute the preexisting memory to the current one
-There are some flaws in this theory though as individuals can have false memories for things that they could have never possibly experienced
What are rich false memories?
-Terminology used to describe when researchers implant entire fabricated events into an individuals memory as opposed to just causing subtle changes in existing memories
-Often individuals will start off not being able to ‘remember’ a lot but as they are questioned more will recall more and more details from an event that never actually happened to them. Interestingly, participants can be lead to believe that extremely traumatic things happened to them when they didn’t i.e. it’s not just trivial things that can exist as rich false memories
-Rich false memories show how powerful suggestion can be
What are some techniques to create rich-false memories?
-Familial informant narrative procedure: family members help manufacture false events with researchers
-Guided imagination
-Suggestive dream interpretation
-Exposure to doctored photographic
