Memory conformity
[3][2][4] Research on memory conformity has revealed that such suggestibility and errors with source monitoring has far reaching consequences, with important legal and social implications.
In 2003 immediately after the murder of former Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh, witnesses were put in a room together so they could not leave the scene of the crime until they were interviewed.
[5] A possible example is an event from 1941 involving Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's Chief of Staff, who had flown to Scotland to present the Duke of Hamilton with a peace proposal between Germany and Britain.
[8] Memory conformity and resulting misinformation can be either encountered socially (discourse between two or more people) or brought about by a non-social source.
[10] Memory conformity can typically be created in the research setting by using photos or videos which depict crime scenes.
[11] A study analyzed which characteristics of dialogue, specifically in regard to response order from participants, had an effect on or predicted memory conformity.
Researchers suggested that normative conformity may have influenced the changes in memory reports because individuals wanted to appear to be in agreement with other around them in order to create a smooth interaction and increase their chances of being liked.
[15] Information influence describes a kind of conformity in which people tend to report what someone else has stated previously because they depend on the other person to resolve uncertainty.
People are more likely to conform, if they believe that their information source had more time to learn the materials, or had better visual acuity, or expressed high confidence in their judgment.
[16] One study considered the effect on memory conformity when participants had to discuss information was encountered that omitted, added to, or contradicted originally encoded items.
This study revealed that people are more likely to be influenced when encountering an additional item or detail in their memory, in comparison to omitted or contradictory manipulations.
Researchers speculated that the uncertainty and debate that occurred in trials surrounding the confirmation of additional information supplied by another person convinced them that they had missed particular details, likely due to a lapse in attention, that ultimately led to altering their memory report.
With the motivation participants had to be accurate in their reporting, informational influence was suspected to have played a role in the increased conformity that was found in this experiment.
[19] After having recalled a memory or piece of information with the help of the hippocampus, the brain uses its judgment abilities within the prefrontal cortex to determine whether it was received by a specific source or another.
Social interactions can increase source-monitoring errors, with law studies showing that participants attributed their memory to an incorrect source about 50% of the time.
[24] Researchers believe that old age and subsequent memory declines may cause individuals to rely more heavily on external aids, such as conversations with others to improve recall.
Initial reports were highly accurate, but after being placed in pairs where each person had seen a slightly different photograph, this pattern changed.
[31] One study showed that levels of memory conformity between individuals varied based on confidence in the comparative quality of initial viewing conditions.
[34] Studies have shown that when misinformation is presented by sources perceived to be less credible (e.g., older adults or children), it is less likely to be incorporated into memory.
They can be warnings against the credibility of a witness or any other attempts to encourage the individual to trust internal sources and resist external conformity.
Some researchers have found postwarnings to be ineffective at reducing memory conformity when they warned their subjects one week after they were misinformed.
[43] A 2002 study, which presented the warning soon after participants were exposed to the false information found postwarnings to have a significant effect on conformity.
[44] A more recent study found postwarnings were ineffective at reducing memory conformity, and that warnings at different times after exposure to misinformation did not matter.
Post-event information comes in three basic types, the first of which is due to the impact that a biased or leading question can have on altering an eyewitness's memory of the event.
[48] False information included within the retelling is often incorporated into the eyewitness's memories, thus altering their perception of the events that occurred.
[5] Such a person could be viewed with more credibility than a stranger for a variety of reasons, including a greater trust and familiarity in the relationship.
[50] This kind of pattern falls under a larger trend that the perceived credibility of the person providing external information has significant influence over memory conformity.
Studies have shown that when participants were asked to discuss their memories of a violent crime video in terms of their emotions, they had higher levels of subjectivity and major errors in free recall.
[9] This suggestibility seems to be the most common way in which post-event information distortion occurs in a legal setting because often, witnesses cannot be prevented from talking to one another.
Research suggests that our predisposition to trust the judgment of a group can be affected by political campaigns and advertising, and even work to alter personal beliefs.
