The role of executive functions in the effects of lying on memory

The effect of lying on memory in daily life: Does motivation matter?

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the effect of lying on memory. A growing body of studies has documented that lying can impair memories and cause memory disruptions, such as forgetting and false memories, to a greater degree than telling the truth. This study aimed to investigate whether motivation plays a role in the effect of lying on memory. The present study utilized a daily life paradigm and manipulated three conditions: truth telling, internally motivated lying, and externally motivated lying. We asked participants to engage in a shopping task and to tell lies (externally motivated lying group) or to choose between telling the truth (truth-telling group) and telling lies (internally motivated lying group) in the interview. Forty-eight hours later, the participants were instructed to truthfully carry out multiple memory assessments. The principal findings of this research are that lying can result in memory impairments, and internally motivated lying can lead to greater impairment in source memory than externally motivated lying. Moreover, no significant differences between the two lying groups were found in the memory tests. The empirical findings of this study provide new insights into the effect of lying on memory.

When is memory more reliable? Scientific findings, theories, and myths

The question of whether human memory is reliable generated extensive research. Memory is open to reconstruction and false retrieval of unpresented information or unexperienced events. These can create problems in judgments and decisions that rely on memory accuracy. In the case of eyewitness testimony, these problems can result in injustice. Then again, memory is also reliable enough. Information acquisition, processing, and retrieval capacity of our memory made it possible to survive the course of evolution. Our memory also makes it possible to continue our daily lives, most of the time without major problems. In the present review, we suggest that the right question to ask may not be whether memory is reliable, but rather to ask when and under what circumstances memory is more reliable. The review's educational aim is to identify the conditions under which memory is more versus less reliable, and its theoretical aim is to discuss memory reliability. We reviewed the literature on situational, emotional, social, and individual difference variables that affect memory reliability, identified the conditions under which memory is more versus less reliable, summarized these outcomes as easy-to-reach items, and discussed them in the light of major theories. Our discussion also touched upon the differentiation of societal myths about the reliability of memory from scientific findings, since believing in memory myths can also affect the reliability of memory. Awareness of the specific circumstances under which memory is more reliable can lead to the consideration of how much memory can be trusted under those specific circumstances.

The Cognitive Cost of Repetitive Thinking: A Study on the Effects of Shifting and Updating on Rumination of Emotional Experiences

The present study aimed to investigate the consequence of resource competition between post-emotional processing and concurrent cognitive tasks. Previous studies have shown that such a resource competition engenders both short-term (e.g., defeats in the execution of the working memory task) and long-term effects (e.g., procrastination or rumination following an emotional experience). We expected these effects to vary as a function of the different WM components involved (shifting, Study 1; updating, Study 2). In two studies, participants (Study 1: N = 48; Study 2: N = 42) were administered one out of two variants of a visuospatial task (Study 1: shifting; Study 2: updating) adopted by Curci and colleagues before and after a negative or neutral manipulation. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second WM task performance and 24 h later. In Study 1, results showed that the exposure to negative content impaired the subsequent executive performance compared with exposure to neutral material, while no difference was found in Study 2. Rumination for emotional material was higher and more persistent over time as a function of shifting resources but not for updating ones. These findings provide information on the possible role of individuals' cognitive resources on rumination for emotional experiences.

External and internal influences yield similar memory effects: the role of deception and suggestion

In legal cases, testimonies can become contaminated because of an amalgam of external and internal influences on memory. It is well-established that external influences (e.g., suggestive interviews) can hurt memory. However, less focus has been placed on the impact of internal influences (e.g., lying) on memory. In the current review, we show that the available evidence suggests that both external and internal influences exert similar effects on memory. That is, we review studies showing that suggesting non-occurrences and suggesting non-experiences can lead to omission errors and false memories, respectively. Likewise, these memory effects are also observed when focusing on internal influences. That is, false denials, feigning amnesia and fabrication have been shown to affect memory in terms of forgetting (i.e., omissions) and false memories (i.e., commissions). Also, we show that both external and internal influences can lead to changes in the belief that an event occurred. We argue that in legal cases, triers of fact should concentrate on whether both types of influences might have affected testimonial accuracy in witnesses, victims, and suspects.

Online dating through lies: the effects of lie fabrication for personal semantic information on predicted and actual memory performance

Research shows that people lie on online dating sites often but might fail to remember this information subsequently. This study investigated participants' predicted and actual memory performance for personal semantic information after telling the truth versus a lie in two experiments in a setup similar to online dating sites. In Experiment 1, participants responded to open-ended questions either truthfully or fabricated lies in a within-subjects design, followed by predictions for remembering their responses. Subsequently, they recalled their responses through free-recall. Using the same design, Experiment 2 also manipulated the type of retrieval task by using a free- or cued-recall test. The results showed that participants consistently had higher memory predictions for truthful than deceptive responses. However, the actual memory performance did not always produce similar results to their predictions. The results suggest that the difficulties during lie fabrication, measured through response latencies, partially mediated the relationship between lying and memory predictions. The study has important applied implications for lying about personal semantic information in online dating contexts.

Psychopathic personality traits are linked to reduced false memories for negative events

Individuals scoring high on psychopathic personality traits process emotional material to a different extent than individuals with few psychopathic traits. Evidence exists that these individuals have impaired emotional memory. The question arises whether this emotional memory impairment has ramifications for the production of emotional false memories. In the present study, we investigated the production of false and true memories for emotional events in a community sample (N = 120) of individuals varying in psychopathic traits (evaluated with the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised [PPI-R] questionnaire). The fearless dominance (FD) component of psychopathy interacted with the emotional impact of to-be-remembered events in the production of false memories, showing fewer negative false memories with increasing levels of FD. At the subjective level, negative false memories were not perceived as vivid memory experiences in high FD individuals. Concerning true memories, higher scores in cold-heartedness were related to fewer true memories for neutral and negative (but not positive) events. These results show that individuals with high psychopathy traits - in particular, FD - do not have a general emotional memory impairment but they process negative material in a different way than individuals with low psychopathic traits and thus are less susceptible to producing false memories for negative events.

Research on the Effects of Lying on Memory: A Scientometric Analysis and a Call for New Studies

Research on the effects of lying and memory is increasingly attracting empirical attention. In the current manuscript, a scientometric analysis was carried out on the mnemonic consequences of lying. This analysis took into account 70 published articles extracted from Scopus and Web of Science databases from 1998 to 2021. A scientometric analysis was conducted in order to visualize the state of the art on this line of research (i.e., authors, countries, institutions, journals, and co-citations). Additionally, a keywords’ cluster analysis was executed to investigate the main keywords used in the published papers. Based on the keywords’ cluster analysis, we identified the main aims and critical issues of the reviewed papers. The United States and the Netherlands are the two most productive countries into the effects of lying on memory. The top five authors are mainly from European countries and wrote from 6 to 15 articles. The cluster analysis detected three clusters of keywords. The critical issues of this line of research are mainly related to the generalizability of the achieved findings for real situations, a lack of a direct control of the manipulation adopted, and a need of additional measures. The current analysis provides a comprehensive overview and understanding of existing research on the effects of lying on memory and provides possible future directions of this research domain.

More Lies Lead to More Memory Impairments in Daily Life

Previous studies have demonstrated that lying can undermine memory and that its memory-undermining effects could be modulated by the cognitive resources required to tell lies. We extended the investigation of the memory-undermining effect by using a daily life setting in which participants were highly involved in a mock shopping task. Participants were randomly assigned to truth-telling, denying or mixed lying conditions. After finishing the shopping task, participants were told that two people wanted to know about their shopping lists and would ask them some questions in an interview. During the interview, participants were asked whether each of ten items were on the shopping list, five of which were randomly selected from the shopping list, while the other five were not sold in the store. In answering the interview questions, the truth-telling group was asked to respond honestly, the denying group was asked to give denial responses, and the mixed lying group was asked to respond deceptively. Thus, the denying group told five lies and the mixed lying group told ten lies in the interview. The item memory test, source memory test and destination memory test were given in an orderly manner 48 h after the interview. We found that the mixed lying group, rather than the denying group, forgot the lies they told in the interview and mistakenly believed they had lied about something that they had not lied about. Moreover, the mixed lying group retained fewer memories about the person they responded to than the honest group. In addition, participants in the mixed lying group had more non-believed memories than those in the truth-telling group in both item and source memory tests. We conclude that more lies could result in more memory disruptions in daily life.

Involvement Modulates the Effects of Deception on Memory in Daily Life

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.

Does Alexithymia Affect Memory for a Crime? The Relationship Between Alexithymia, Executive Functions, and Memories

Prior studies on alexithymia and memory have found a negative association between the two constructs, especially when emotional memories are considered. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that also the executive functioning (EF) of the individuals influences this relationship. Thus, the goal of this study is to verify whether alexithymia can influence the memory accuracy for a violent crime in people with different levels of EF resources in terms of both correct details and memory distortions (i.e., omissions and commissions) reported. We assessed the alexithymia and EF resources of individuals and showed participants a video of a violent crime (i.e., murder). We then asked participants to testify about the content of the video by imagining to be witnesses of the crime. A memory test was run on two moments in time: immediately after the video presentation and after 10 days. Findings demonstrated that alexithymia influences the recall of the event both in proneness to report correct details and memory distortions of the participants (i.e., omissions and commissions). Additionally, we found a contribution of EF resources in this relationship. The findings provide new information for legal professionals on memory functioning.