Memory Conformity and Suggestibility

Memory conformity studies have found that misinformation introduced by a confederate during collaborative remembering is later falsely recalled and recognised by participants on individual testing (e.g. Meade & Roediger, 2002; Reysen, in press). In the present experiment, individual participants and a confederate studied DRM lists and during turn taking collaborative recognition the confederate falsely recognised several critical non-studied words prior to the participant responding. As in the past research, it was found that on later individual testing participants falsely recognised the critical non-studied words suggested by the confederate. The participants’ levels of suggestibility were then measured using Gudjonsson’s Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2, 1987). It was found that there was a positive correlation between levels of suggestibility and false recognition of words suggested by the confederate. It is therefore argued that susceptibility to memory conformity is influenced by a person’s suggestibility levels.