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Can you trust what you hear? Concurrent misinformation affects recall memory and judgements of guilt

Can you trust what you hear? Concurrent misinformation affects recall memory and judgements of guilt
Can you trust what you hear? Concurrent misinformation affects recall memory and judgements of guilt
n most misinformation studies, participants are exposed to a to-be-remembered event, and then subsequently given misinformation in textual form. This misinformation impacts on people’s ability to accurately report the initial event. In this paper, we present two experiments that explored a different approach to presenting misinformation. In the context of a murder suspect, the to-be-remembered event was audio of a police interview, whilst the misinformation was co-presented as subtitles with some words being different to, and more incriminating than, those that were actually said. We refer to this as concurrent misinformation. In Experiment 1, concurrent misinformation was inappropriately reported in a cued-recall test, and inflated participants’ ratings of how incriminating the audio was. Experiment 2 attempted to employ warnings to mitigate the influence of concurrent misinformation. Warnings after the to-be-remembered event had no effect, whilst warnings before the event reduced the effect of concurrent misinformation for a sub-set of participants. Participants that noticed the discrepancy between the audio and the sub-titles were also less likely to judge the audio as incriminating. These results were considered in relation to existing theories underlying the misinformation effect, as well as the implication for the use of audio and text in applied contexts.
Misinformation, concurrent misinformation, audio, warnings, discrepancy detection, memory
0096-3445
1741-1759
Neil, Gregory
85453750-0611-48d9-a83e-da95cd4e80b3
Higham, Philip
4093b28f-7d58-4d18-89d4-021792e418e7
Fox, Simon
c97cd48c-a704-4959-a48a-35de40873585
Neil, Gregory
85453750-0611-48d9-a83e-da95cd4e80b3
Higham, Philip
4093b28f-7d58-4d18-89d4-021792e418e7
Fox, Simon
c97cd48c-a704-4959-a48a-35de40873585

Neil, Gregory, Higham, Philip and Fox, Simon (2021) Can you trust what you hear? Concurrent misinformation affects recall memory and judgements of guilt. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150 (9), 1741-1759. (doi:10.1037/xge0001023).

Record type: Article

Abstract

n most misinformation studies, participants are exposed to a to-be-remembered event, and then subsequently given misinformation in textual form. This misinformation impacts on people’s ability to accurately report the initial event. In this paper, we present two experiments that explored a different approach to presenting misinformation. In the context of a murder suspect, the to-be-remembered event was audio of a police interview, whilst the misinformation was co-presented as subtitles with some words being different to, and more incriminating than, those that were actually said. We refer to this as concurrent misinformation. In Experiment 1, concurrent misinformation was inappropriately reported in a cued-recall test, and inflated participants’ ratings of how incriminating the audio was. Experiment 2 attempted to employ warnings to mitigate the influence of concurrent misinformation. Warnings after the to-be-remembered event had no effect, whilst warnings before the event reduced the effect of concurrent misinformation for a sub-set of participants. Participants that noticed the discrepancy between the audio and the sub-titles were also less likely to judge the audio as incriminating. These results were considered in relation to existing theories underlying the misinformation effect, as well as the implication for the use of audio and text in applied contexts.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 17 November 2020
Published date: September 2021
Keywords: Misinformation, concurrent misinformation, audio, warnings, discrepancy detection, memory

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 446259
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/446259
ISSN: 0096-3445
PURE UUID: 09aac34f-2720-4e5f-b6c1-fda21d632155
ORCID for Philip Higham: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6087-7224

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 02 Feb 2021 17:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:52

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Contributors

Author: Gregory Neil
Author: Philip Higham ORCID iD
Author: Simon Fox

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