Misinformation effect

In psychology, the misinformation effect is the idea that information presented after a memory is made can affect the accuracy of that memory. In other words, statements made to a person or questions asked of a person after an event can influence the way the person recalls the event and can cause distortions in memory. In some studies, people have been led to recall events that were totally false based on information they received from another person or from the phrasing of questions asked about the false event. Stress, age, susceptibility, the timing and phrasing of the presentation of the false information, repetition, the credibility of the person presenting the information, and the plausibility of the false scenario are all thought to be factors in how readily a person incorporates false events into "real" memories.

Background

Memories are part of everyday life. People rely on them for everything from self-identity to criminal prosecutions. Researchers in the 1970s conducted some well-known experiments that tested whether human memories can be altered or compromised by information provided after an event has occurred. The results indicate that memories can be readily altered by information given by another party after the event and that even the way questions about the event are worded can change what the person believes happened.

In the 1970s, University of California psychology professor Elizabeth F. Loftus and several colleagues conducted studies into the effect of misinformation on the testimony of eyewitnesses. They showed test subjects videos of staged car accidents and asked questions afterward to test their recall. The testing showed that witnesses could be led to remember details that were incorrect. For instance, the accident in the video happened at a stop sign, but in some cases, the interviewer questioning the subjects asked if the car stopped at the yield sign. Forty-one percent of these subjects would later incorrectly choose a photo including the yield sign over the one with the stop sign when asked to select a photo of the accident scene. Seventy-five percent of those who did not receive false information correctly chose the photo with the stop sign. Loftus's study showed that using a word such as smashed rather than bumped to describe the accident changed how the subject perceived the speed of the cars at the time of the accident. From this and other aspects of their study, the researchers concluded that eyewitness testimony could be influenced by misinformation.

Overview

Subsequent studies by Loftus and others attempted to consider for alternatives to this conclusion. Studies have investigated whether the person was using the information presented to fill in gaps in what was seen rather than falsely remembering the incident. For instance, they tested whether the person was not falsely remembering the yield sign or had never noticed the sign in the first place and was assuming it was a yield sign based on the question that had been asked.

In the 1990s, researcher Marcia Johnson proposed an additional theory for how misinformation finds its way into real memories. Johnson and her colleagues developed the source monitoring framework theory (SMF). This theory states that when the brain encodes a memory, it does not necessarily encode that memory's source. Later, a person may recall the information, such as a detail about a new movie, and think that the detail came from something read online when it was really shared by a friend. This can cause an overlap in memories from several sources and cause the person to think something is real when it was not.

Researchers have determined that applying the imagination to false images can encode them as seemingly real memories. For instance, asking a person to repeatedly imagine being lost in a department store as a child later resulted in that person believing such an episode had actually occurred even though it had not. A study by Miriam J. J. Lommen and colleagues on soldiers deploying to Afghanistan yielded similar results. The soldiers were questioned before deployment; the questioning included gently planted information about a fictional event during the coming deployment. Seven months later when the soldiers were questioned again, 26 percent of them recalled the fictional event as real.

Researchers have learned that the chances of a person being affected by misinformation depend on several factors. Young children are more susceptible than older children and adults are. The reliability of the false source of information plays a factor as well; information provided by a friend or family member is more likely to be incorporated into a false memory than information from a stranger, for instance. The timing of the presentation is also a factor, as information presented immediately after an event is less likely to be incorporated than information given some time later, when some of the original memory has presumably faded. People were also more likely to incorporate false details that seem plausible.

Studies on the misinformation effect have shown that it can have an impact on everyday life. In a time with twenty-four-hour news cycles, easy Internet access, and social media, misinformation can be spread easily and rapidly. Once it is released, it is nearly impossible to recall and can be difficult to counteract. This can affect people's perception of current events and the people who are part of them. In some cases, this can have severe consequences, especially when the misinformation causes false memories related to criminal activity or abuse. If a witness's memory is proven faulty, a guilty person may go free or an innocent person may be accused of a crime they did not commit.

One situation in which the misinformation effect can become a factor is memories of childhood sexual abuse. While many such memories are valid and the events recalled really did happen, others can be influenced by conversations held many years later. In some cases, therapists have inadvertently triggered the formation of false memories while using techniques to "retrieve" buried memories or asking questions to determine whether abuse occurred. These memories based on misinformation can cause heartache for the person who "remembers" them, for the alleged perpetrator, and even for victims of actual abuse who may find their stories doubted when others are proven false. Loftus and other experts on the subject have been called to court in many instances to testify about the potential for eyewitness testimony to be incorrect due to the misinformation effect.

Bibliography

Arkowitz, Hal, and Scott Lilienfeld. "Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts." Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2010, www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

Bohannon, John. "How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony? Scientists Weigh In." Science Magazine,3 Oct. 2014, www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/how-reliable-eyewitness-testimony-scientists-weigh. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

"False Memories." Psychologist World, www.psychologistworld.com/memory/false-memories-questioning-eyewitness-testimony.php. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

Feinholdt, Alina. "Never Give Up: The Persistence of Misinformation Effects." The Inquisitive Mind, 31 Oct. 2014, www.in-mind.org/blog/post/never-give-up-the-persistence-of-misinformation-effects. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

French, Chris. "False Memories of Sexual Abuse Lead to Terrible Miscarriages of Justice." The Guardian,25 Nov. 2010, www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/24/false-memories-abuse-convict-innocent. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

Loftus, Elizabeth F. "Planting Misinformation in the Human Mind: A 30-Year Investigation of the Malleability of Memory." University of California-Irvine,webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/LoftusLearning%26MemoryMisinfo05.pdf. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

Lommen, Miriam J. J., et al. "Susceptibility to Long-Term Misinformation Effect Outside the Laboratory." European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2 May 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3644056/. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.

Palfrey, John. "Misinformation and Disinformation." Britannica, 18 Nov. 2024, www.britannica.com/topic/misinformation-and-disinformation. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.

Zaragoza, Maria S., et al. "Misinformation Effects and the Suggestibility of Eyewitness Memory." Penn State University, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.551.6940&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 26 Dec. 2016.