Memory Misinformation Essay

Literature Review

Misinformation, the intentional or unintentional spread of false information, has been shown to alter, suppress, or impair a person’s memory of an original event (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). The earliest experiments that studied false memories found that information provided to an eyewitness after an event can alter that person’s memory of this event; when exposed to leading questions or additional information following the event, participants were more likely to forget the actual details of the event and answer with respect to the incorrect post-event information (Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Loftus, 1975; Loftus, 1977).

Since then, the misinformation effect has been extensively researched, and scientists have endeavored to gain more

One study examined the effect of gender, sex, intelligence, memory performance, and socioeconomic factors on three-to-five year old children. This study determined that, when age was controlled, all variables made a significant contribution to susceptibility to false information. Intelligence provided a 6% variance, which supports the conclusion that children with higher levels of intelligence are less susceptible to misinformation. Memory performance and gender have similar effects on confabulation, with a 2% variance, indicating that males and those who recalled more information from the memory performance test were less susceptible to misinformation than females and those who failed to recognize misinformation. Children from higher socioeconomic statuses were less susceptible to misinformation than children from lower socioeconomic statuses, with a variation of 1%. However, these variations are extremely small; while the results are statistically significant, intelligent or more affluent people are still susceptible to misinformation, which still results in a significant problem (McFarlane, Powell, & Dudgeon,