Rolling Myth Lab Homepage » Magdalena Kękuś has just received PhD

Our lab collaborator, Magdalena Kękuś, has just received PhD! The defense took place July 17. We are truly proud of her accomplishment and we wish her more and more successes in her future academic career.

Magdalena's doctoral thesis entitled "Mechanisms, determinants and methods of reducing the memory conformity effect" consists of 4 papers published in widely recognized journals and publishing houses, such as British Journal of Psychology, Applied Cognitive Psychology, and Palgrave Macmillan.

You can get acquainted with her work and its reviews HERE.

Below we present the Abstract of her work:

The object of the presented studies is the memory conformity effect. This phenomenon occurs when a witness observes a given incident (e.g. a crime), then talks about it with other witnesses and as a result of such discussion their memories are distorted. For instance, it can happen that a witness, despite seeing a thief wearing a black cap (original information), testifies that the cap was red as this was the information heard from a co-witness (misinformation). Therefore, this phenomenon may contribute to unreliable testimonies, which remain the leading cause of incorrect court decisions. Consequently, the major objective of the presented research was to analyze the mechanisms, determinants, and methods of reducing memory conformity.

A key component of the research on the mechanisms of memory conformity was the experimental procedure which allowed for detailed identification of them. This procedure allowed to demonstrate that this effect can occur due to two mechanism types: (1) memory related mechanisms, consisting in the fact that the misinformation causes a person to have a mistaken memory record concerning the original information; and (2) non-memory related mechanisms, where a person has a correct memory concerning both the original information and the misinformation, meaning they are aware of the discrepancies between them but they respond according to the misinformation (in the present research it was shown that this result from distrust in one’s own memory).

In addition, one of the presented studies analyzed the relationship of susceptibility to misinformation provided by another person with compliance and susceptibility to social influence. The analysis did not find such relationships. Another research considered the fact that the determinants of the memory conformity may differ depending on the reasons (mechanisms) for which this effect occurred. Thus, the relationship of susceptibility to misinformation with three individual characteristics was analyzed: compliance, suggestibility, and susceptibility to social influence, while considering the fact that these relationships may be moderated by awareness of the discrepancy between the original information and misinformation. However, this hypothesis has not been confirmed.

Moreover, the effectiveness of four techniques to reduce the memory conformity effect was analyzed: (1) reinforced self-affirmation (a technique that increases self-confidence); (2) extended warning against misinformation; (3) training about memory fallibility and (4) a technique that involves demonstrating to participants that their memory is sometimes fallible and motivating them to resist unwanted influences. Reinforced self-affirmation has not proven to be effective in reducing memory conformity. Meanwhile, the implementation of an extended warning against misinformation eliminated the memory conformity effect, while the application of training about memory fallibility and inoculation led to a reduction (but not complete elimination) of the studied phenomenon.

Rolling Myth Lab

Social Media

Rolling Myth Lab