I still think it was a banana: Memorable lies and forgettable truths

Allan, Kevin and Gabbert, Fiona. 2008. I still think it was a banana: Memorable lies and forgettable truths. Acta Psychologica, 127(2), pp. 299-308. ISSN 0001-6918 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Interpersonal influences on cognition can distort memory judgements. Two experiments examined the nature of these ‘social’ influences, and whether their persistence is independent of their accuracy. Experiment 1 found that a confederate’s social proximity, as well as the content and the confidence of their utterances, interactively modulates participants’ immediate conformity. Notably, errant confederate statements that ‘lied’ about encoded material had a particularly strong immediate distorting influence on memory judgements. Experiment 2 revealed that these ‘lies’ were also memorable, continuing a day later to impair memory accuracy, while accurate confederate statements failed to produce a corresponding and lasting beneficial effect on memory. These findings suggest that an individual’s ‘informational’ social influence can be selectively heightened when they express misinformation to someone who suspects no deceptive intent. The methods newly introduced here thus allow multiple social and cognitive factors impinging on memory accuracy to be manipulated and examined during realistic, precisely controlled dyadic social interactions.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.06.001

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology
Psychology > Forensic Psychology Unit

Dates:

DateEvent
2008Published

Item ID:

12151

Date Deposited:

16 Jul 2015 12:22

Last Modified:

30 Jun 2017 15:09

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/12151

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