Memories people no longer believe in can still affect them in helpful and harmful ways

The effect of mood on shaping belief and recollection following false feedback

The current study examined how mood affects the impact of false feedback on belief and recollection. In a three-session experiment, participants first watched 40 neutral mini videos, which were accompanied by music to induce either a positive or negative mood, or no music. Following a recognition test, they received false feedback to reduce belief in the occurrence of the events displayed in some of the videos (Session 2). This was followed by an immediate memory test and a delayed memory assessment one week later (Session 3). The results revealed that participants in negative mood reported higher belief scores compared to those in positive moods, despite an overall decline in belief scores for all groups following the false feedback. Notably, individuals in negative moods exhibited less reduction in their belief scores after encountering challenges, thereby maintaining a higher accuracy in their testimonies. Over time, a reduction in the clarity of participants' memory recall was observed, which correspondingly reduced their testimony accuracy. This study thus indicates that mood states play a role in shaping belief and memory recall under the influence of false feedback.

Challenging memories reduces intrusive memories and the memory amplification effect

This study scrutinizes the influence of attenuating beliefs about the veracity of traumatic experiences on the manifestation of intrusive recollections and the memory amplification effect. Participants were exposed to distress-inducing visual stimuli, subsequently rating their emotional status pre and post exposure. They engaged in a recognition task, identifying scenarios within the stimuli. Participants' recall was contested, casting doubt about the occurrence of certain scenes. Subsequently, they maintained a daily log of intrusive memories over a week. A second session reiterated the same process. This method effectively diminished the certainty in the participants' traumatic memories. Scenes whose occurrence was contested demonstrated a significant decline in both intrusive memories and memory amplification when juxtaposed with uncontested ones. Interestingly, no significant correlation emerged between the diminished belief in traumatic incidents and reductions in intrusive memory or memory amplification. Thus, this study advocates that interrogating the veracity of traumatic recollections can mitigate the prevalence of intrusive memories and the memory amplification effect, suggesting a novel potential therapeutic approach for trauma-related disorders.

Preference for cheap-and-easy memory verification strategies is strongest among people with high memory distrust

When choosing strategies for verifying one's memory, people are more influenced by the perceived cost of using a strategy than by its likelihood of yielding reliable information (i.e., cheap-strategy bias). The current preregistered study investigated whether people with high memory distrust are less likely to exhibit this bias than their low memory distrust counterparts. Participants (N = 535) imagined a scenario in which they witnessed an accident and were then led by friends to question their memories about the accident. Participants had to propose five strategies for verifying that particular memory. Following this, they rated each strategy's cost, reliability, and their likelihood of using it, as well as completing two validated measures of trait memory distrust. Contrary to our prediction, compared with participants with low memory distrust, participants with higher memory distrust exhibited a larger cheap-strategy bias. Follow-up analyses suggested that compared with memory-trusters, memory distrusters' strategy choices were more influenced by a strategy's perceived cost, and less influenced by its perceived reliability. Our results suggest that people who are more skeptical about their memories may be more cynical about the worthwhileness of verifying their memory, which could make them especially susceptible to misinformation acceptance and false memory creation.