Effects of collaborative recall: Denying true information is as powerful as suggesting misinformation

Abstract

Using a social contagion paradigm, we compared the corruptive effects on memory of two types of post-event misinformation: Suggesting incorrect details and denying correct details. Together with a confederate, undergraduate participants (n=90) watched complex scenes. Next, participant and confederate took turns in recalling scene details. In one condition, the confederate suggested incorrect details, whereas in the other condition the confederate denied true details recalled by the participant. Finally, participants were given a second free recall test in the absence of the confederate. Denying correct details appeared to be as powerful as suggesting incorrect information, with 72% of the participants omitting previously mentioned, but confederate-denied, details from their free recalls and 52% incorporating incorrect details in their free recall. Also, these participants scored higher on the Gudjonsson Compliance Scale than those who were not misled by the suggestions of the confederate.

Keywords:

• Memory conformity effects
• social contagion paradigm
• collaborative recall
• Gudjonsson Compliance Scale

Notes

1. When t-tests were conducted separately for the add and the deny condition, we found no significant differences in GCS scores between those who had accepted the misinformation and those who had not. This is probably due to a statistical power problem. Most importantly, there is no theoretical rationale for running separate t-tests.