Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2005) Memory for fact,
fiction, and misinformation. Psychological Science, 16, 109 – 195.
During the 2003 war in
Method
872 participants from 4
different universities in 3 countries participated in the experiment. Each participant completed a questionnaire
intended to test memory. Each
questionnaire included three types of critical item, true (T) items, false
retracted (FR) items, and fictional (F) items.
Participants rated this critical information twice, first rating their
memory for the event and providing a true/false rating of the event. On later pages participants were asked how
certain they were that the critical items (that they recognized) had been
retracted. A later item queried the
participants about the opinions of six reasons for the war.
Results
Regression analyses of both
the T and FR items were conducted, using retraction and memory ratings as
predictors and the truth rating as the dependent variable (Table 4). For T
items memory ratings were a stronger predictor of truth ratings than were
retraction ratings. For the FR items,
German and Australian participants showed a reversal of the previous result,
i.e., the retraction rating was a better predictor of the truth rating. This was not the case for the American group,
which showed analogous results for the FR items as for the T items. A further analysis of the truth responses to
items that had received a memory rating greater than 2 and a retraction rating
greater than 2, suggested that only the American sample still believed the
critical FR items as truths (Figure 1).
In order to shed further light onto this difference between the groups
from different countries, three multiple regression models were tested. Analysis of these models suggests that
suspicion is an important factor in determining truth rating. Finally, on average participants resisted the
F items. However, examining the
responses to the WMD item, a significant difference across country was found
(0.34 for
Conclusions
Participants from the German
and Australian samples were more sensitive to retractions of information than were
participants from the American sample.
Furthermore, participants from the American sample showed no sensitivity
to retractions of erroneous information, still assigning a high level of truth
to the information. The authors suggest
that these differences are due to differences in the levels of suspicion
displayed by the samples. The authors
draw three conclusions from this information.
First, frequent presentation of information, even when retracted, can
lead to false memories. Second, a
retraction in and of itself is not enough.
The retraction must be accompanied with suspicion of the original
information. Finally, people ignore
retractions no matter how sure they are that the retraction occurred.
Important Legal
Disclaimer: The preceding are articles we read together in the Lampinen Lab Fall 2005 false memory reading group. By
clicking on the button next to the article you can see the summary of that
article. The summary was prepared by the student presenting that article and it
is of course the case that the views expressed in the summary do not
necessarily represent the views of the reading group as a whole, Dr. Lampinen, the Lampinen Lab,
Hugo's, the University of Arkansas, the Razorback Football or Basketball teams
(although we're not sure about cross country), people living down the street
from us, Bob Dylan, Jack Fate, our extended families, or anyone else for that
matter except for the student who wrote the summary (and they don't necessarily
believe what they wrote either).