Ingroup/outgroup membership and competence: investigating the influence on the misinformation effect

• Main Author: Ang, Jia Yi
• Other Authors: Rebecca Nichols
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168508
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Being inherently social, humans often discuss events with others. Research reveals that one’s memory may become less accurate after exposure to misinformation. This is known as the misinformation effect, which is a phenomenon when an individual’s memory of a witnessed event is altered after exposure to post-event misinformation. Given characteristics of social sources of misinformation can influence one’s susceptibility to the misinformation effect, the present study investigated the influence of social characteristics such as competence and ingroup/outgroup membership of an information source on the misinformation effect. Participants were assigned to groups using a minimal group procedure and completed a classic misinformation paradigm. The competence of the misinformation source was manipulated through a filler task. The results found a lack of a main effect of ingroup/outgroup membership on the proportion of robust false memories but reported a main effect of competence and interaction effect of both variables. Specifically, participants displayed a significantly higher proportion of robust false memories when the misinformation source was of low competence, and displayed the highest proportion of robust false memories when the misinformation source was also from an outgroup, contrary to the hypotheses. The present study offers insight into the interaction of social characteristics on the misinformation effect, given that in real-world scenarios social sources of information likely have multiple features which may affect the memory of a witnessed event.