The impact of self-threat and personal engagement on distortions of memory reports
Keywords:
memory; misinformation; eyewitness testimony; engagement; motivation; self-threat; engagement
Abstract
The main aim of the presented experiment was to verify whether self-threat and low engagement influence memory processes of eyewitnesses, including their susceptibility to misinformation. The results replicated the eyewitness misinformation effect. Also, according to the hypotheses, high engagement and self-threat resulted in better memory, enhancing the performance of non-misled participants. However, the hypotheses stating that self-threat and engagement influence the susceptibility to misinformation were not confirmed. The enhancement of memory of non-misled subjects was interpreted in terms of increased motivation to self-protecting and more careful processing of the material to be remembered. The lack of relationship between self-threat, engagement and the susceptibility to misinformation could be due to the fact that self-threat and engagement act oppositely: on the one hand, they enhance the memory of the original event, but they also increase the memory of misinformation. Thus, no general effect is present.
References
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Apsler, R., Sears, D. O. (1968). Warning, personal involvement, and attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 162-166.
Bellezza, F. S. (1984). The self as a mnemonic device: The role of internal cues. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 506-516.
Belli, R. F. (1989). Influence of misleading postevent information: Misinformation interference and acceptance. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 118, 72-85.
Campbell, J. M., Edwards, M. S., Horswill, M. S., Helman, S. (2007). Effects of contextual cues in recall and recognition memory: The misinformation effect reconsidered. British Journal of Psychology, 98, 485-498.
Craik, F. I. M., Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671-684.
Dalton, A. L., Daneman, M. (2006). Social suggestibility to central and peripheral misinformation. Memory, 14, 486-501.
Eagly, A. M., Kulesa, P., Chen, S., Chaiken, S. (2001). Do attitudes affect memory? Tests of the congeniality hypothesis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 5-9.
Festinger, L. (1957/2007). Teoria dysonansu poznawczego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.
Greenwald, A. G. (1985). Personaliza versus zasada wewnętrznej jedności osoby. Przegląd Psychologiczny, 28, 887-923.
Greenwald, A. G., Pratkanis, A. R. (1988). „Ja” jako centralny schemat postaw. Nowiny Psychologiczne, 2, 20-70.
Gur, R. C., Sackeim, H. A. (1979). Self-deception: A concept in search of a phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 147-169.
Kendzierski, D. (1980). Self-schemata and scripts: The recall of self-referent and scriptal information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 23-29.
Lindsay, D. S., Johnson, M. K. (1989). The reversed eyewitness suggestibility effect. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27, 111-113.
Loftus, E. F. (1979). Reactions to blatantly contradictory information. Memory and Cognition, 7, 368-374.
Loftus, E. F., Miller, D. G., Burns, H. J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 19-31.
Łukaszewski, W. (1978). Struktura ja a działanie w sytuacjach zadaniowych: empiryczne studium nad funkcjami osobowości. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.
Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Persona- lity and Social Psychology, 35, 63-78.
Paszkiewicz, E. (1974). Ja a zachowanie. Psychologia Wychowawcza, 2, 192-209.
Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., Goldman, R. (1981). Personal involvement as a determinant of argument-based persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 847-855.
Pezdek, K. (1977). Cross-modality semantic integration of sentence and picture memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 3, 515-524.
Polczyk, R. (2007). Mechanizmy efektu dezinformacji w kontekście zeznań świadka naocznego. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
Reykowski, J. (1979). Motywacja: postawy prospołeczne i osobowość. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.
Schacter, D. L. (2003). Siedem grzechów pamięci. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.
Sedikides, C., Green, J. D. (2004). What I don’t recall can’t hurt me: Information negativity versus information inconsistency as determinants of memorial self-defense. Social Cognition, 22, 4-29.
Sedikides, C., Strube, M. J. (1995). The multiply motivated self. Personality and Social Psycho- logy. Bulletin, 21, 1330-1335.
Sedikides, C., Strube, M. J. (1997). Self-evaluation: To thine own self be good, to thine own self be sure, to thine own self be true, and to thine own self be better. W: M. P. Zanna (red.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 209-269. New York: Academic Press.
Symons, C. S., Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371-394.
Szpitalak, M., Polczyk, R. (2010). Warning against warnings: Alerted subjects may perform worse. The impact of misinformation, involvement and warning on eyewitness testimony. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 41, 105-112.
Szpitalak, M., Polczyk, R. (w opracowaniu). Kwestionariusz Oceny Pracoholizmu.
Tousignant, J. P., Hall, D., Loftus, E. F. (1986). Discrepancy detection and vulnerability to misleading postevent information. Memory and Cognition, 14, 329-338.
Wojciszke, B. (2003). Człowiek wśród ludzi. Zarys psychologii społecznej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.
Wright, D. B., Stroud, J. N. (1998). Memory quality and misinformation for peripheral and central objects. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 3, 273-286.
Zaragoza, M. S., Lane, S. M. (1994). Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 934-945.
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