Memory Conformity

Gabbert, F., Memon, A., & Allan, K. (2003). Memory Conformity: Can Eyewitnesses Influence Each Other's Memories for an Event?. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17(5), 533-543.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2003

DOI

10.1002/acp.885

Link

https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.885

Cited from

literature_literary_theory, statistics_experimental_design

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Correlated-Source Attribution Failure
  • But because the accounts share their source, the marginal contribution of each is thin, and the bundle carries no more independent weight than the single shared origin — yet a naive fact-finder reads a sharp single-witness claim ("witness A's account was decisive") the dimensionality cannot support.

    This sourceDemonstrates co-witness contamination: witnesses who discuss an event come to share memories (71% mistakenly reported items acquired only from a co-witness), so corroboration among witnesses with a common source is illusory and supports no sharp single-witness claim. (Resolves needs-source-862; supports illusory corroboration from a shared origin among witnesses.)

• Unreliable Narrator
  • The independence condition governs triangulation — two witnesses corroborate strongly only if their distortions are independent, so co-witnesses who discussed the event share a distortion and do not independently confirm.

    This sourceShows co-witnesses who discuss an event share a distortion — 71% mistakenly recalled items acquired only through discussion — so they do not independently corroborate, the coupling that defeats triangulation.

Domain-specific

• Memory conformity
  • Eyewitness implications are stated as research-grounded risk and uncertainty, never as conclusions about a particular person or proceeding.

Verification

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