Abstract

FERNANDES, Delfina; ALBUQUERQUE, Pedro B.  and  LUNA, Karlos. Can Enlightenment Post-Warnings Eliminate memory Conformity?. Av. Psicol. Latinoam. [online]. 2020, vol.38, n.3, pp.1-.  Epub Mar 11, 2021. ISSN 1794-4724.  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/apl/a.8375.

After discussing with another witness an event, a person can incorporate new and false information in his/her own memories. That false information may appear in later accounts of the event, a phenomenon called memory conformity. The present study aimed to understand how witnesses can be protected from this false information using enlightenment post-warnings and the MORI technique. In pairs, each participant saw a different video that contained inconsistent information. Then, members of the pair discussed details of the video, and sometimes spontaneously introduced false information. Finally, half of the participants received an enlightenment post-warning, and then all participants completed a recognition test. The results showed that the discussion between witnesses impaired memory accuracy, showing the memory conformity effect. However, the enlightenment post-warnings did not reduce that effect. We conclude that the misleading information introduced by discussing with another witness has a strong influence on the memory of the event. In this way, the accounts of witnesses may contain false information difficult to get rid of, which is particularly worrying to the legal system.

Keywords : Enlightenment; memory conformity; MORI technique; post-warning; witnesses.

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