Effects of Social-Comparative Memory Feedback on Eyewitnesses' Identification Confidence, Suggestibility, and Retrospective Memory Reports

TitleEffects of Social-Comparative Memory Feedback on Eyewitnesses' Identification Confidence, Suggestibility, and Retrospective Memory Reports
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2006
AuthorsMichael R. Leippe, Donna Eisenstadt, Shannon M. Rauch, Mark A. Stambush
JournalBasic & Applied Social Psychology
Volume28
Issue3
Pagination201-220
ISSN01973533
Abstract

In 2 experiments, college students watched a videotaped theft and either recounted it orally or completed an objective memory test about it. Later, some eyewitnesses received either positive or negative feedback about these memory reports, suggesting a cowitness's report agreed or disagreed with theirs or that they had better or worse memory accuracy than most cowitnesses. Feedback influenced a number of subsequent memory-related responses. Witnesses who had received positive (vs. no) memory feedback later evinced heightened suggestibility in terms of accepting misinformation embedded in a memory interview and made identifications more confidently, quickly, and (in one condition) accurately. Witnesses who had received negative memory feedback evinced heightened suggestibility, made identifications less confidently, and recalled the witnessing and identification experience as involving poorer conditions for memory. Feedback appears to influence the overall self-credibility of memory, thereby altering confidence in both the feedback-specific memory and other aspects of memory for the event.

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DOI10.1207/s15324834basp2803_1