Confirmatory Interviewer Feedback in Suggestive Interviews Involving Forced Fabrications

Eyewitnesses forced to fabricate during an eyewitness interview about events they never witnessed can later develop false memories for information they knowingly fabricated. Two experiments were conducted to assess whether confirmatory interviewer feedback (e.g., “that's right!”) would increase the extent to which participants would incorporate fabricated causal events into their freely reported eyewitness accounts 1 week later. In Experiment 1, relative to neutral feedback, confirmatory interviewer feedback led to an increase in false recall of fabrications. This effect persisted in Experiment 2 even though participants were specifically warned about the misleading interview prior to providing their eyewitness account, although overall false recall was numerically higher in Experiment 1 (unwarned) than in Experiment 2 (warned). Although prior studies have documented that confirmatory feedback increases false assents for fabricated details, the present study provides evidence that confirmatory feedback also increases false recall of fabricated events.

Cognitive interview · Confirmatory factor analysis · False Memory · Free recall · Interview · Recall · Suggestibility · Deception detection and forensic psychology · Memory Processes and Influences · Social and Intergroup Psychology

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