Association for
Psychological Science
Exposure to false
information about an event usually makes it more difficult for people to recall
the original details, but new research suggests that there may be times when misinformation
actually boosts memory.
Research published in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that people who
actually notice that the misinformation is inconsistent with the original event
have better memory for the event compared with people who never saw the
misinformation in the first place.
"Our experiments
show that misinformation can sometimes enhance memory rather than harm
it," says psychological scientist Adam Putnam of Carleton College, lead author
of the research.
"These findings are important because they help explain
why misinformation effects occur sometimes but not at other times -- if people
notice that the misinformation isn't accurate then they won't have a false
memory."
"These findings are important because they help explain
why misinformation effects occur sometimes but not at other times -- if people
notice that the misinformation isn't accurate then they won't have a false
memory."
In their first
experiment, Putnam and colleagues had 72 undergraduate participants view six
slide shows, each of which contained 50 photos portraying a particular event.
After looking through the slide shows, the participants completed an unrelated
"distractor" task for about five minutes and then read narrative
descriptions for each slide in the previous slide shows.
For example, if the
slide showed a thief finding $1 bills in a car, the description might be
consistent (e.g., "He examined the bills, and saw they were all $1
bills"), neutral (e.g., "He examined the bills and saw they were all
US currency"), or inconsistent (e.g., "He examined the bills and saw
that they were all $20 bills") with the slide show.
After reading the
descriptions and completing another distractor task, the participant then
answered multiple-choice questions about what they remembered from the original
slide shows, such as "What kind of bills were in the car?"
The
responses included a correct option ($1 bills), an incorrect option with
misinformation from the narrative ($20 bills), or a different incorrect option
($5 bills). After making their selection, participants reported whether they
had noticed any discrepancies between the original slide show and the
narratives.
True to a general
misinformation effect, people were most likely to choose the misinformation
response when the detail in the narrative was inconsistent with the slide show.
But when participants
reported remembering a change between the slide shows and the narrative, this
deficit disappeared: Participants were more likely to select the correct
response after seeing misinformation compared with seeing a neutral detail.
And when they reported
that the narrative had contradicted the slide, participants were less likely
to select the incorrect misinformation response for details that were
inconsistent in the narrative compared with those that were neutral.
Although exposure to
misinformation seemed to impair memory for the correct detail, detecting and
remembering misinformation in the narrative seemed to improve participants'
recognition later on.
A second experiment
produced similar results, and additional analyses showed that how memorable a
detail was seemed to make a difference. Details that were less memorable,
relatively speaking, were more vulnerable to the misinformation effect.
These findings suggest
that the relationship between misinformation and memory is more complex than we
might have thought -- mere exposure to misinformation doesn't automatically cue
the misinformation effect:
"Classic
interference theory in memory suggests that change is almost always bad for
memory, but our study is one really clear example of how change can help memory
in the right circumstances," Putnam explains.
"People may learn
about false memory research and walk away thinking that false memories can
easily be implanted about all sorts of events- that we're constantly
remembering things that never happened," says Putnam. "Our research
helps in showing that although false memories can occur with some regularity,
it isn't a sure thing by any means."