Self-relevance enhances susceptibility to false memory

Eyewitness testimony serves as important evidence in the legal system. Eyewitnesses of a crime can be either the victims themselves-for whom the experience is highly self-referential-or can be bystanders who witness and thus encode the crime in relation to others. There is a gap in past research investigating whether processing information in relation to oneself versus others would later impact people's suggestibility to misleading information. In two experiments (Ns = 68 and 122) with Dutch and Chinese samples, we assessed whether self-reference of a crime event (i.e., victim vs. bystander) affected their susceptibility to false memory creation. Using a misinformation procedure, we photoshopped half of the participants' photographs into a crime slideshow so that they saw themselves as victims of a nonviolent crime, while others watched the slideshow as mock bystander witnesses. In both experiments, participants displayed a self-enhanced suggestibility effect: Participants who viewed themselves as victims created more false memories after receiving misinformation than those who witnessed the same crime as bystanders. These findings suggest that self-reference might constitute a hitherto new risk factor in the formation of false memories when evaluating eyewitness memory reports.

Associations between the misinformation effect, trauma exposure and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression

This research aimed to conduct an initial investigation into the relationships between the "misinformation effect" and trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Study 1 was a pilot study developing an online misinformation paradigm that could assess the influence of emotion and arousal on memory distortions. Participants (n = 162, M_age = 39.90; SD = 10.90) were recruited through TurkPrime. In Study 2 community members (n = 116, M_age = 28.96; SD = 10.33) completed this misinformation paradigm and measures of trauma exposure, PTSD, and depression. Study 1 found memory for central details was better for high-arousal than low-arousal and neutral-arousal images. Peripheral memory appeared worse for negative and neutral images than positive images. Study 2 found that, when controlling for age and gender, PTSD symptoms significantly predicted proportion of correct responses on control items. However, there was no evidence to indicate that trauma exposure, PTSD symptoms nor depression symptoms, were associated with proportion of correct responses on misled items. Valence and arousal did not influence these associations. These findings have important implications in clinical and legal contexts where individuals with a history of trauma, or who are experiencing symptoms of PTSD or depression, are often required to recall emotionally-laden events. There is a surprising dearth of research into the misinformation effect in clinical populations and further research is required.

A systematic review of the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation

Inaccurate memory reports can have serious consequences within forensic and clinical settings, where emotion and misinformation are two common sources of memory distortion. Many studies have investigated how these factors are related; does emotion protect memory or leave it more vulnerable to the distorting effects of misinformation? The findings remain diffused. Thus, the present review aimed to clarify the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation. 39 eligible studies were reviewed. Results varied according to the type and dimension of emotion measured. Level of arousal may be unrelated to susceptibility to misinformation when retrieval occurs without delay; studies including delayed retrieval were limited. Stimuli valence may be associated with increased susceptibility to peripheral misinformation but unrelated to other misinformation. The following results were reported by limited studies: short-term distress and moderate levels of stress may decrease susceptibility, while anger and greater cortisol response to stress may increase susceptibility to misinformation. Source memory may also be unaffected by emotion. The results have important potential implications for forensic and clinical practice, for example by highlighting the value of enquiring witnesses' source memory. Methodological recommendations for future studies are made.

The Impact of Emotion and Sex on Fabrication and False Memory Formation

The aim of the present study was to examine how negative emotion and sex affect self-generated errors as in fabrication set-up and later false recognition of those errors. In total, 120 university students volunteered to take part in the study. Participants were assigned at random into two equal sized groups (N = 60) depending on the type of event they received (negative emotional or neutral). We expected that fabrication and false recognition would be enhanced for the emotional event compared to the neutral one. We further hypothesized that both the willingness to fabricate and later false recognition would be enhanced for women compared with men. The results partly confirmed the hypotheses. The results showed that emotional valence (negative) affects both the willingness to fabricate about events that never took place, and the recognition of the fabrication as true at a later point. Women and men were equally likely to fabricate but women were more likely to recognize their fabrication, particularly for the emotional event. The results are discussed in the context of prior work.

Anger Increases Susceptibility to Misinformation

The effect of anger on acceptance of false details was examined using a three-phase misinformation paradigm. Participants viewed an event, were presented with schema-consistent and schema-irrelevant misinformation about it, and were given a surprise source monitoring test to examine the acceptance of the suggested material. Between each phase of the experiment, they performed a task that either induced anger or maintained a neutral mood. Participants showed greater susceptibility to schema-consistent than schema-irrelevant misinformation. Anger did not affect either recognition or source accuracy for true details about the initial event, but suggestibility for false details increased with anger. In spite of this increase in source errors (i.e., misinformation acceptance), both confidence in the accuracy of source attributions and decision speed for incorrect judgments also increased with anger. Implications are discussed with respect to both the general effects of anger and real-world applications such as eyewitness memory.

Does emotional or repeated misinformation increase memory distortion for a trauma analogue event?

In general, memory of highly negative and even traumatic events can distort. However, the effect of misinformation exposure on such memories requires further investigation given the inconsistent past findings. With two experiments, we investigated: (1) whether misinformation distorts memory for highly negative analogue events, (2) whether memory distortion is increased for more emotional and potentially traumatic details compared to unemotional details, and (3) whether repeated misinformation exposure further increases memory distortion for highly negative events compared to single exposure, a possibility that has not been investigated to our knowledge. In both experiments, participants viewed a trauma analogue film with some scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they were given three "eyewitness" reports describing the film's events. To manipulate misinformation repetition, either zero, one, or all three of the reports described removed scenes. To determine whether memory distortion is increased for emotional details, half of the removed scenes were more traumatic than the other half. Participants exposed to misinformation falsely remembered more removed scenes compared to participants who were not exposed to misinformation. Further, memory distortion was increased for emotional (vs. unemotional) aspects of the film. Repeated misinformation exposure, however, did not lead to significantly higher error rates compared to single exposure. The lack of perceptual overlap between our written misinformation and film test items may have limited false memories even with repeated misinformation. Alternatively, the repeated vs. single misinformation effect may exist but be very small, as suggested by our raw means and effect sizes.

The Relation Between Human Values and Perceived Situation Characteristics in Everyday Life

Values refer to abstract beliefs which serve as guidelines in peoples' life and affect the way people and events are evaluated. Simultaneously, unlike attitudes, values transcend specific actions, and situations. While recent research showed that values are related to the attention and interpretation of situational information in standardized laboratory settings, up to date hardly any empirical work investigated how values relate to situation perception in daily life. In our study, we assessed the relation between the endorsement of human values and situation characteristics (i.e., the 8 DIAMONDS). Using the Day Reconstruction Method in two samples (German and US-American), we found that especially variance in the experience of negatively connoted situation characteristics were due to individual differences. Power was related to experiencing more deceptive situations, while the reversed pattern emerged for universalism and benevolence. Tradition was related to experiencing more aversive situations while self-direction was related to experiencing less situations high in adversity. Although, our results might provide some initial evidence for a relation between personal values and subjective situations experiences in everyday life, no clear pattern emerged and further investigation of the relation is necessary.

Do emotional stimuli enhance or impede recall relative to neutral stimuli? An investigation of two "false memory" tasks

Many eyewitness memory situations involve negative and distressing events; however, many studies investigating "false memory" phenomena use neutral stimuli only. The aim of the present study was to determine how both the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure and the Misinformation Effect Paradigm tasks were related to each other using distressing and neutral stimuli. Participants completed the DRM (with negative and neutral word lists) and viewed a distressing or neutral film. Misinformation for the film was introduced and memory was assessed. Film accuracy and misinformation susceptibility were found to be greater for those who viewed the distressing film relative to the neutral film. Accuracy responses on both tasks were related, however, susceptibility to the DRM illusion and Misinformation Effect were not. The misinformation findings support the Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis that negative stimuli will lead to remembering more accurate details but also greater likelihood of memory distortion. However, the PNE hypothesis was not supported for the DRM results. The findings also suggest that the DRM and Misinformation tasks are not equivalent and may have differences in underlying mechanisms. Future research should focus on more ecologically valid methods of assessing false memory.

Gating Out Misinformation: Can Young Children Follow Instructions to Ignore False Information?

The current study investigated the effects of misinformation on children's memory reports after practice with the logic-of-opposition instruction at time of test. Four- and 6-year-old children participated in a play event in Session 1. During a two-week delay, parents presented their children with either misinformation or correct information about the play event. Prior to a memory interview in Session 2, some misled children were given a developmentally appropriate logic-of-opposition instruction to not report information provided by their parents. Results indicated that children were misled by the incorrect information, but that the logic-of-opposition instruction aided in the children's retrieval of the original memory, particularly for the 6-year-olds. Implications of the results for memory malleability and social demand effects in children are discussed.

Investigating the variability of memory distortion for an analogue trauma

In this paper, we examine whether source monitoring (SM) errors might be one mechanism that accounts for traumatic memory distortion. Participants watched a traumatic film with some critical (crux) and non-critical (non-crux) scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they completed a memory test. To increase the likelihood participants would notice the film's gaps, we inserted visual static for the length of each missing scene. We then added manipulations designed to affect people's SM behaviour. To encourage systematic SM, before watching the film, we warned half the participants that we had removed some scenes. To encourage heuristic SM some participants also saw labels describing the missing scenes. Adding static highlighting, the missing scenes did not affect false recognition of those missing scenes. However, a warning decreased, while labels increased, participants' false recognition rates. We conclude that manipulations designed to affect SM behaviour also affect the degree of memory distortion in our paradigm.

Do distress responses to a traumatic film predict susceptibility to the misinformation effect?

The misinformation effect is defined as an impairment in memory for past events due to exposure to misleading information (E. F. Loftus, 2005 ). Some people may be more susceptible to the misinformation effect than others, and this may also depend on their response to a distressing event. The purpose of the current study was to investigate several key factors that may contribute to misinformation susceptibility for distressing events, namely posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms such as avoidance, intrusions, and dissociation. Participants watched either a neutral or trauma film, rated their level of distress, and completed measures of trait and state dissociation. When participants returned a week later, misinformation was introduced via an eyewitness statement and free recall was assessed. Findings indicated that dissociation was related to higher distress ratings following the film but was not related to acceptance of misinformation. However, avoidance scores were related to increased recall of misinformation items, and reported experiences of intrusions were related to greater accuracy. These results are discussed in light of the paradoxical negative emotion hypothesis.

Mood, motivation, and misinformation: aging and affective state influences on memory

Normative age differences in memory have typically been attributed to declines in basic cognitive and cortical mechanisms. The present study examined the degree to which dominant everyday affect might also be associated with age-related memory errors using the misinformation paradigm. Younger and older adults viewed a positive and a negative event, and then were exposed to misinformation about each event. Older adults exhibited a higher likelihood than young adults of falsely identifying misinformation as having occurred in the events. Consistent with expectations, strength of the misinformation effect was positively associated with dominant mood, and controlling for mood eliminated any age effects. Also, motivation to engage in complex cognitive activity was negatively associated with susceptibility to misinformation, and susceptibility was stronger for negative than for positive events. We argue that motivational processes underlie all of the observed effects, and that such processes are useful in understanding age differences in memory performance.

Memory distortion: an adaptive perspective

Memory is prone to distortions that can have serious consequences in everyday life. Here we integrate emerging evidence that several types of memory distortions - imagination inflation, gist-based and associative memory errors, and post-event misinformation - reflect adaptive cognitive processes that contribute to the efficient functioning of memory, but produce distortions as a consequence of doing so. We consider recent cognitive and neuroimaging studies that link these distortions with adaptive processes, including simulation of future events, semantic and contextual encoding, creativity, and memory updating. We also discuss new evidence concerning factors that can influence the occurrence of memory distortions, such as sleep and retrieval conditions, as well as conceptual issues related to the development of an adaptive perspective.