Abstract
In two experiments, we investigated how social comparative feedback affects the metacognitive regulation of eyewitness memory reports. In Experiment 1, 87 participants received negative, positive, or no feedback about a co-witness’s performance on a task querying recall of a crime video. Participants then completed the task individually. There were no significant differences between negative and positive feedback groups on any measure. However, participants in both of these conditions volunteered more fine-grain details than participants in the control condition. In Experiment 2, 90 participants answered questions about a crime video. Participants in the experimental groups received either positive or negative feedback, which compared their performance to that of others. Participants then completed a subsequent recall task, for which they were told their performance would not be scored. Feedback did not significantly affect participants’ confidence, accuracy, or the level of detail they reported in comparison to a no feedback control group. These findings advance our understanding of the boundary conditions for social feedback effects on meta-memory.
Highlights
Our memory for experienced events is the result of a reconstructive process that can be influenced by social factors (Bartlett, 1932)
We expected that giving participants negative or positive feedback about their own memory performance would affect their confidence in the accuracy of their memory, and affect the level of detail, or grain size, of the information they chose to report
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that there was no effect of condition on participants’ (a) confidence in the accuracy of their fine-grain answers at Phase I, F(2, 83) = 0.57, p = 0.57, ω = 0.10; (b) accuracy of both fine and coarse-grain responses at Phase I, F(2, 83) = 0.30, p = 0.74, ω = 0.14; (c) volunteering of fine-grain responses, F(2, 83) = 2.12, p = 0.13, ω = 0.16 and (d) withholding responses at Phase II, F(2, 83) = 1.12, p = 0.33, ω = 0.05
Summary
Our memory for experienced events is the result of a reconstructive process that can be influenced by social factors (Bartlett, 1932). The presence of others can affect peoples’ confidence in their memory, and discussion of an event between two or more individuals can cause their accounts to converge (Wright et al, 2000, 2009; Shaw et al, 2007; Gabbert et al, 2012). These findings accord with the theory of social comparison, which posits that in the absence of objective means for assessing our opinions and abilities, we do so by comparing them to those of others (Festinger, 1954). We examined how receiving social comparative feedback (i.e., information about others’ memory reports—or how our memory compares to that of others) affects the metacognitive processes that underlie memory reporting
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