An individual differences approach to the suggestibility of memory over time

Abstract

We examined how certain personality traits might relate to the formation of suggestive memory over time. We hypothesised that compliance and trust relate to initial acceptance of misinformation as memory, whereas fantasy proneness might relate to integration of misinformation into memory after later intervals (relative to the time of exposure to misinformation). Participants watched an excerpt from a movie—the simulated eyewitness event. They next answered a recall test that included embedded misinformation about the movie. Participants then answered a yes/no recognition test. A week later, participants answered a second yes/no recognition test about the movie (each yes/no recognition test included different questions). Before both recognition tests, participants were warned about the misinformation shown during recall and were asked to base their answer on the movie excerpt only. After completing the second recognition test, participants answered questions from the Neuroticism Extroversion Openness Personality Inventory-3 (McCrae, Costa, & Martin, 2005) and Creative Experiences Questionnaire (Merckelbach, Horselenberg, & Muris, 2001). While compliance correlated with misinformation effects immediately after exposure to misinformation, fantasy-prone personality accounted for more of the variability in false recognition rates than compliance after a 1-week interval.

Keywords:

• False recognition
• Suggestibility
• Misinformation effects
• Personality
• Traits

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our lab assistants, Michael Adie, Michael Balaschi, Valerie Kingsley, Roland Denomme, and Angela Sibley, for their help running the study.

Notes

¹We started with 76 participants, but since four participants indicated that they had previously seen the movie clip shown during the experiment, we did not include their data in the analyses.

²Although we used the CEQ as our predictor, the two measures of fantasy—the CEQ and the fantasy facet of the NEO-PI-3—were positive correlated (r=.46, p<.05). Both measures showed the same results using the stepwise regression.