The Effects of Survival Context on False Memories

Abstract

Research on human memory has shown some encoding procedures to be better than others. Recent studies in the literature proposed that survival context might provide the best encoding conditions identied in human memory research. The aim of the current study is to investigate the effects of survival context on suggestibility to post-event misinformation. Participants read a neutral story and rated certain target words in the story with regard to their relevance to a survival or a moving scenario; or their pleasantness. Next, participants either read the same story a second time or they read another version containing post-event misinformation. A between-subject design was used in Experiment 1 and participants' memory for correct and false information was tested with a recall (Experiment 1A) or a recognition (Experiment 1B) test. In Experiment 2 a within-subjects design was used and participants' memory for correct and false information was tested with a recall (Experiment 2A) or recognition (Experiment 2B) test. In total 198 students (Experiment 1A=54, Experiment 1B=48, Experiment 2A=48, Experiment 2B=48) participated in the study. Results showed that words rated within a context, regardless of the specic context, were more resilient to post-event misinformation than words that were not rated. However, there were no differences between the survival, moving or pleasantness contexts with regard to correct or false recall or recognition. Overall, survival advantage was not observed for neither correct nor false memory. Results did not demonstrate a consistent survival advantage for decreasing the post-event misinformation effect.

Keywords

• Bellek
• Bellek Yanılmaları
• Olay Sonrası Yanlış Bilgi Etkisi
• Hayatta Kalma Bağlamı