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Laney et al. (false memory) Experiment 1 - Coggle Diagram
Laney et al. (false memory)
Experiment 1
AIM
The aim was to investigate whether giving false feedback suggesting that a participant had loved to eat asparagus as a child, would generate a false belief or memory of experiences linked to eating and enjoying asparagus.
RESEARCH METHOD
The experiment was a laboratory experiment as the environment the participants were tested in was very artificial and unlike an everyday event, although some small attempts to make one questionnaire look like a menu were taken. Participants were tested in laboratory settings in groups of up to eight people.
The
Independent Variable
was whether a participant had the false belief that they had enjoyed asparagus as a child embedded during the second part of the experiment. These participants were compared with a (control group) of participants who received no false belief.
The
Dependent Variable
was measured through the use of five questionaires. A questionaire is a self-report measure where participants respond through writing their answers down.
SAMPLE-
Opportunity
All 128 of the participants were undergraduate students at the University of California who received course credit for their time. The sample consisted of 99 females and 29 males who had a mean age of 20.8 years old. The participants were randomly assigned to either the ‘love’ condition (63) or the control group (65).
PROCEDURE
Participants arrived at the laboratory in groups of up to eight and were told that they were going to take part in a study of ‘food preferences and personality’. This deception was necessary to limit demand characteristics through awareness of the true aim.
During the first session (week one), all participants were treated identically. Participants first completed the FHI and RQ. The researchers also asked participants to complete three other questionnaires. These were to distract them from the true aim of the study. These other questionnaires included a personality measure, a social desirability scale and an eating habits questionnaire.
The critical item, ‘you loved to eat cooked asparagus’, was embedded in the third position of the profile for participants in the ‘love’ condition. Those in the control group only received the three filler items. Participants were then asked questions about this fake profile to ensure that they had processed the feedback.
Approximately one week later participants were invited back to the laboratory. At this point participants were randomly allocated to the ‘love asparagus’ condition or the control group. All participants were told that their responses from the first week had been processed by a computer which had generated a profile of their early childhood experience with food and were given a report that included:
These questions included:
1)
Imagine the setting in which this experience might have happened. Where were you? Who was with you?
2)
On a scale of 1(not at all) to 9 (very much),to what extent did this experience affect your adult personality?
Following this, participants completed the FHI and the RQ a second time to measure any changes in responses from before the implanting of the false belief. Further to these, participants also completed three further questionnaires: FPQ, FCQ and MBQ.
When participants had completed these questionnaires they were fully debriefed by the researchers and told the true nature of the experiment.
DESIGN
This experiment is an example of an independent groups design as participants only took part in one of the two conditions the ‘love’ condition or the control group.
RESULTS
The two key issues the researchers wanted to investigate were whether subjects formed false asparagus-related beliefs and whether these beliefs have consequences.
When asked a second time as part of the FHI if a participant loved asparagus the first time they tried it, participants in the ‘love’ condition’s average (mean) response rose by 2.6 points following the false feedback from the researchers. The responses from those in
the control condition only increased by 0.2 points in comparison. This was a statistically significant difference between the conditions.
Thirty-one participants were excluded from this analysis as they initially believed they loved asparagus the first time, or scored greater than five on the FHI on the first occasion. This left 97 participants to be included in the analysis.
Memories or Beliefs?
When asked if they had specific memories or a belief that they loved asparagus the first time they tried it, there was a difference between the ‘love’ condition and the control group. However this was not a statistically significant difference.
LOVE(46)
(M)MEMORIES: 22%(10) (B)BELIEF: 35%(16)
M or B: 57%(26) NOT THE CASE: 43% (20)
CONTROL(51)
(M)MEMORIES: 12%(6) (B)BELIEF: 27 (14)
M or B: 39%(20) NOT THE CASE: 61%(31)
For the purpose of this study, memories are the ability to recall specific structured events with some details; the participant ‘remembers’ an experience. Beliefs are less detailed and not tied to a specific time or place; the participant ‘knows’ it happened but cannot go into specific detail.
This suggests that those participants who were told that they loved asparagus when they first tried it had a greater chance of generating a false memory or belief to substantiate this false memory.
BELIEVERS V/S NONBELIEVERS
To be classified as a believer, participants had to meet the following three criteria:
1) given a low rating on the FHI when initially asked if they loved asparagus (week one)
2) increased their rating on the FHI when asked if they loved asparagus on week two
3) given positive ‘memory’ or ‘belief’ response on the MBQ.
Forty-eight per cent (22) of participants in the ‘love’ condition met the criteria to be labelled believers and further analysis compared their scores with the other ‘non-believers’ where the impact of the implanted memory had a lesser effect. The ratings of these 22 believers increased an average of 4.5 points from week one to week two on their FHI item.
Nonbelievers increased an average of just 0.9 points. Of the 22 participants classified as believers, 10 claimed to have an asparagus ‘memory’ and 12 claimed a ‘belief’ on the MBQ.
To assess the consequence of false beliefs, the believers were compared with those in the control group.
On the RQ, believers reported more desire to eat the critical asparagus item than those in the control group. On the FPQ, in comparison to the control group (mean 3.84), believers (mean 6.14) reported liking asparagus significantly more.
Finally, on the FCQ, believers were willing to pay significantly more for asparagus than those in the control group with over a quarter (14) of those in the control group stating that they would never buy asparagus. None of the believers selected the never buy response.
CONCLUSIONS
Participants can be led to develop positively framed false beliefs and these false beliefs can have a consequence on behaviour and food preferences.
Participants who had the false belief implanted increased their rating of their love
of asparagus and these beliefs had further impacts on how much they would be willing to spend on asparagus, greater intention to eat asparagus in the future, and a greater preference for it.