Decisions and memory: Differential retrievability of consistent and contradictory evidence

Abstract

Three experiments are reported that investigate the effect of decision-making on memory. In Experiment 1, subjects were found to recall, following a delay, more facts that supported decisions they had made concerning three texts than facts that contradicted their decisions. Recognition of both types of facts was equivalent, however. The same results were obtained even when recall of both types of facts was equated prior to decision-making (Experiment 2) and when decisional processing was eliminated by simply informing the subject of the correct decision for each text (Experiment 3). On the basis of these results, we concluded that (1) decisions, whether internally generated or externally provided, produce a reorganization of memory traces, (2) this reorganization produces differential accessibility of supporting and contradictory facts, and (3) this differential accessibility produces biased memory performance that can be removed by the use of strong retrieval cues. Two models of memory performance following decision-making are proposed to account for these results.