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Contagious contacts: How police trainees influence each other’s memories for a criminal event

Author

Summary, in English

This study investigated the effect of confirmatory and disconfirmatory feedback on the accuracy (realism) in witnesses’ confidence judgements of their event memory. After watching a short video of a kidnapping the participants answered 44 two-alternative questions on the videotape. Two weeks later the participants were handed their old question-answering sheet with the original questions and their own answers. In addition feedback was provided in writing for each answer. The participants were asked to give confidence ratings with respect to the correctness of each answer. In the Control condition the participants received no feedback. Overall, the witnesses’ confidence ratings showed overconfidence in all conditions. Furthermore, confirmatory feedback caused higher overconfidence, compared both with disconfirmatory feedback and no feedback. The results show that the realism in the eyewitnesses’ confidence judgements of their event memory is indeed sensitive to co-witness feedback, especially to confirming feedback.

Publishing year

2004

Language

English

Publication/Series

Paper presented at the 14th European Conference on Psychology and Law of the EAP & L Crakow, Polen, July 7–10, 2004

Document type

Conference paper

Topic

  • Psychology

Conference name

14th European Conference on Psychology and Law of the EAP & L

Conference date

2004-07-07 - 2004-07-10

Status

Published