Absorption, fantasy proneness, and the false fame effect

Abstract

Participants tend to claim that nonfamous names refer to well-known people when they have previously been required to read these nonfamous names. This false fame effect originates from source monitoring errors. In two studies, we explored whether high levels of absorption or fantasy proneness are related to such source monitoring errors. While an overall false fame effect did occur, neither high absorption nor high fantasy prone participants were found to display a stronger false fame effect than participants low on these personality traits. Our findings suggest that the effects of these individual differences on false fame are in fact small and that the false fame effect is not the most suitable paradigm to study clinical relevant memory illusions.