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The role of emotional elaboration in the creation of false memories
Author(s) -
Drivdahl Sarah B.,
Zaragoza Maria S.,
Learned Dianne M.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1446
Subject(s) - elaboration , psychology , suggestibility , false memory , cognitive psychology , elaboration likelihood model , emotional memory , memory errors , eyewitness testimony , autobiographical memory , social psychology , developmental psychology , recall , neuroscience , philosophy , amygdala , humanities , persuasion
Two experiments employed an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to examine the effects of emotional elaboration on the creation of false memories for suggested events. The results of both experiments converge in showing that reflectively elaborating on the emotional consequences of suggested events increases both false belief and false memory in having witnessed the suggested events. Moreover, the results also showed that emotional elaboration leads to higher false memory than other types of meaningful elaboration, thus providing evidence that the emotional content of the elaboration plays a role in promoting false memory development. The results have several real‐world implications for forensic and therapeutic interviews. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.