Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated that liars who adopt a false denial strategy often forget what they lied about, which has been labeled the denial-induced forgetting (DIF) effect. However, several investigations have not found such an effect. It has been suggested that involvement might play a role in the inconsistency. The present study was designed to directly determine whether involvement modulates the effects of deception on memory. Participants were assigned randomly to either high- or low-involvement conditions and were required to complete a mock shopping task. They were then asked to participate in an interview in which they were asked to respond honestly or deceptively. Two days later, final memory tests were given, and the participants were asked to give honest responses. We found a DIF effect in the high-involvement condition but not in the low-involvement condition. Moreover, the liars in the high-involvement condition created more non-believed memories in the source memory test and the destination memory test than the honest participants. In addition, liars in both the high- and low-involvement conditions forgot who they lied to. We conclude that the effects of deception on memory could be influenced by the degree of involvement.
Highlights
Deception, or lying, is a kind of behavior that aims to provide false information and induce a false belief (Hyman, 1989)
It has been argued that the analysis of variance (ANOVA) F-test is not informative of the source of an interaction or main effect when the factorial experiments have more than two levels, but the linear models are (Schad et al, 2020)
Some studies have demonstrated that false denial could disrupt liar’s memories and lead to the loss of memory about what they have lied about (Otgaar et al, 2018a, 2020; Battista et al, 2020a, 2021a), and this phenomenon is called the denial-induced forgetting (DIF) effect (Otgaar et al, 2016)
Summary
Lying, is a kind of behavior that aims to provide false information and induce a false belief (Hyman, 1989). The following procedure was used to study the effects of false denial on memory: participants were presented with a video or were asked to perform a task They were randomly assigned to either an honest condition or a false denial condition and engaged in an interview. Data analysis revealed no significant effects between the false denial and honest groups in the source memory test, suggesting that no DIF effect was found in the study. Combining this finding with those from previous studies that obtained a DIF effect, the authors suggested that there may be a boundary to the DIF effect, and the effect would disappear when the participants are actively involved in the event. We expected that the effects of deception on memory would differ based on the degree of involvement
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