social Psychology
soheyla sohrabi; Javad Salehi; Tahere Elahi
Abstract
Abstract: The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of creating credibility for the co-witness bylabeling, on the conformity of visual memory. In this research, the conformity of the recognition memory of 64participants was investigated based on the "pretest-posttest control group design". ...
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Abstract: The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of creating credibility for the co-witness bylabeling, on the conformity of visual memory. In this research, the conformity of the recognition memory of 64participants was investigated based on the "pretest-posttest control group design". First, in the pre-test step, theactual level of visual recognition memory performance of the individual participants was measured using theInternational Affective Picture System (IAPS). Then, the participants of the experimental group participated inimage recognition tasks in the presence of an expert co-witness (researcher's confederate) who was validated bythe labeling him a police officer, and the participants of the control group in the presence of a non-expert co-witness (researcher's confederate). Data analysis using one way analysis of covariance showed that theparticipants of the experimental group conformed with the valid co-witness more than the control group (ηp2 =0.88, p < 0.005 and F = (58) 19.35). In conclusion, the results showed that providing information about theexpertise of a co-witness can have an effect on memory conformity with him. It turned out that the person'sassessment of the validity of the co-witness's memory plays the most important role. It seems that a person'sperception of the credibility of a co-witness affects the way he processes new information, which leads to anincrease in conformity due to wrong attributions in the source monitoring process. Social influence also plays arole in the credibility effect, though not in terms of giving credibility to memories, but in terms of how information isused.
