False Memories:
Hard-boiled Eggs and Police
Brutality
Tyler Davis
Darrell Worthy
Anushka Pai
Cindy Stappenbeck
Make-Believe
Memories
The Misinformation Effect
• Memory can be skewed by giving
misinformation
– Ex. stop/yield sign in a simulated traffic
accident
• Situations in which misinformation can
occur:
– Listen to others give their versions of events
– Interrogations
– Biased Media Coverage
The Misinformation Effect
• Depends on:
– Active/passive role
– Opportunity to observe
– Degree of emotional arousal
• Can you think of a time when you may
have been influenced by misinformation?
Lost in the Mall
• A.K.A. the Familial Informant FalseNarrative Procedure
• Rates for partially or wholly planting a
memory of events that did not happen vary
from 25%-50%
• Rich false memories – experiences about
which a person feels confident in, provides
details, and even expresses emotions
about made-up events that never
happened.
False Memories
• Imagining events can lead to believing you
performed the events when asked later.
• How might this be explained?
• Real memories have consequences
– Do false memories similarly have
consequences for the individual?
– Hard-boiled eggs/dill pickles experiment
– Alan Alda even experienced consequences to
believing hard-boiled eggs made him sick
True or False?
• Difficult to distinguish between the two
• Real memories tend to be held with more
confidence
• More research is needed
• How do we tell the difference between a
deliberate lie and an “honest” lie?
Take-home Message
• Suggestions can lead to false memories
• A memory reported with confidence,
details, and emotion does not mean that it
actually happened
Creation of False Memories
Failures in Source Monitoring
Dreams
TV
Film
Memory
Situations
Imagination
People
Metamemory
• Why would it be in memory if it never
happened?
• If details are vivid, then it must be true.
• Human memory is like a camera.
• Childhood memories are not often not
remembered.
• Traumatic memories are often too
emotional to be remembered.
Schematic Reconstruction
• Existing schemata help activation.
• Schemata do not have to come from
personal experience.
• Schemata related to plausibility of event.
Plausibility related to acceptance.
Real vs. Imagined
• We currently have no way to distinguish.
• Ceci et al., 1994
• Heaps and Nash, 2001
• With rehearsal the differences between
false and true memories become smaller.
Social Demands
• Authority Figures
• Majority beliefs
• Encouraging you to remember
Discussion Questions
• People, especially children are suggestible.
How can we ask children about things that have
happened without increasing chances of
creating false memories?
• Could we implant an emotional memory in adults
for an event that occurred in adulthood?
• Why might memory reconstruction be a good
thing?
Leo (2001) False Confessions
• Judges and juries put a lot of weight on
confessions. Even though research suggests a
fair number of confessions may be false.
• Has psychological science shown that the jury
system is outdated? Are the most convincing
evidence to jurors (confessions and eye witness
testimony) the least sound?
Third degree/ myths
• Cops used to like to torture it out of them
– Bush says, “This leads to false confessions in
Americans, but not terrorists.”
• Now they use more psychological
techniques
– Not as intuitive as to why someone would
confess
How they break you…
and make you falsely confess
• Shift you from confident to hopeless
• Only way to improve your situation is to
confess
– Low-end, High-end, and systemic
inducements
• Has this tactic ever been used on you by
anyone? How well do you think it would
work? What variables do you think might
affect it?
Types of Confessions
•
•
•
•
•
Voluntary
Stress Induced Compliance
Coerced Compliant
Coerced Persuaded
Non-Coerced Persuaded
The consequences
• Social Psychology suggests that the
publicity behind false confessions now is
just the tip of the iceberg
• Juries find it convincing
• Police stop investigation
• The belief (and the problem)-”Innocent
People Don’t Confess!”
How do we fix it?
• Improved Police Training
– Kill the myths
– Mandatory video taping
– Expert witness testimony
• How else might the system be improved?
• Should police interrogators have to take a
cognitive psychology class?
Gordon Bower, the ACLU, and the
Hot Dog Vendors say:
• DON’T GIVE UP YOUR MIRANDA
RIGHTS!!!
• How do you think you could help yourself
remember to never talk to police even if
you think you are obviously innocent?
Laboratory Paradigms for
Studying False Confessions
Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
Russano, Meissner, Narchet and
Kassin (2005)
Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
• Divided into four groups: 2 (witness vs. no witness) X 2
(Fast paced vs. slow paced)
• Reaction time task
• Confederate read letters to be typed at either fast or slow
pace
• Subjects instructed not to hit the ALT key because
experiment would crash
• The computer appeared to crash after 60 seconds
• Distressed experimenter entered and asked subject if
they pressed the ALT key
Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
• In the witness group the confederate
admitted to have seen subject hit the ALT
key
• Subjects in the fast paced group were
considered to be more vulnerable because
of lower subjective certainty
Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
• Compliance: subjects asked to sign a
“confession”
• Internalization: second confederate asked
what happened while experimenter left the
room (i.e. “I did it, I’m guilty”)
• Confabulation: Experimenter reread the
list of letters and asked subjects to
reconstruct how they hit the ALT key
Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
• Results…
Russano et al. (2005)
• 330 participants divided into 8 cells 2
(innocent vs. guilty) X 2 (minimization vs.
no minimization) X 2 (deal vs. no deal)
• Partnered with a female confederate
• Recruited for individual vs. team decision
making
• Solved a series of logic problems
• Some problems alone, some as a team
Russano et al. (2005)
• In the guilty condition confederate asked
subject for the answer to a problem that
was to be solved individually
• Answer was usually provided (those who
didn’t were excluded)
• The confederate did not ask for the
answer in the innocent condition
Russano et al. (2005)
• Experimenter returned and said there was
a problem and he needed to speak to
each of them individually
• Confederate was led out and supposedly
questioned for five minutes
• Experimenter returned and said that they
had the same wrong answer on the target
problem
Russano et al. (2005)
• The professor may have to be notified and
he might consider it cheating
• Subjects might be disciplined under
campus cheating policies
• Subjects were asked to sign a statement
admitting to sharing answers
Russano et al. (2005)
• Minimization: experimenter/interrogator
lessened the seriousness of the offense
• Expressed sympathy and concern,
provided face-saving excuses
Russano et al.
• Deal: If subjects signed then things would
be settled quickly; would return later to
complete the experiment
• If not the professor would have to get
involved
• Professor’s involvement was implied to be
bad
• No deal: experimenter would still call the
professor to see what to do next
Russano et al. (2005)
• Results…
• Diagnosticity: ratio of
true confessions to
false confessions
Condition
No tactic
Deal
Minimization
Minimization + deal
True Confessions False Confessions Diagnosticity
46%
6%
7.67
72%
14%
5.14
81%
18%
4.5
87%
43%
2.02
Discussion Questions
• Which paradigm is most similar to police
interrogations?
• Is the higher rate of true confessions worth
the higher rate of false confessions?
• What tactics are appropriate for police to
use?