False Memories: Hardboiled Eggs and Police Brutality

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False MemoriesHard-boiled Eggs and Police
Brutality

• Tyler Davis
• Darrell Worthy
• Anushka Pai
• Cindy Stappenbeck

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Make-Believe Memories
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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

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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?

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Lost in the Mall

• A.K.A. the Familial Informant False-Narrative
  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.

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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

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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?

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Take-home Message

• Suggestions can lead to false memories
• A memory reported with confidence, details, and
  emotion does not mean that it actually happened

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Creation of False Memories
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Failures in Source Monitoring
Dreams
TV
Film
Memory
Situations
Imagination
People
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Social Demands

• Authority Figures
• Majority beliefs
• Encouraging you to remember

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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?

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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?

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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

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How they break youand 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?

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Types of Confessions

• Voluntary
• Stress Induced Compliance
• Coerced Compliant
• Coerced Persuaded
• Non-Coerced Persuaded

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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
  Dont Confess!

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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?

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Gordon Bower, the ACLU, and the Hot Dog Vendors
say

• DONT 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?

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Laboratory Paradigms for Studying False
Confessions

• Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
• Russano, Meissner, Narchet and Kassin (2005)

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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

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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

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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, Im guilty)
• Confabulation Experimenter reread the list of
  letters and asked subjects to reconstruct how
  they hit the ALT key

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Kassin and Kiechel (1996)

• Results

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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

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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 didnt
  were excluded)
• The confederate did not ask for the answer in the
  innocent condition

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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

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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

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Russano et al. (2005)

• Minimization experimenter/interrogator lessened
  the seriousness of the offense
• Expressed sympathy and concern, provided
  face-saving excuses

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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
• Professors involvement was implied to be bad
• No deal experimenter would still call the
  professor to see what to do next

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Russano et al. (2005)

• Results
• Diagnosticity ratio of true confessions to false
  confessions

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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?