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

Volume

17

Issue

5

Pages

533-543

DOI

10.1002/acp.885

DOI registrant

Wiley

Link

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

Cited from

literature_literary_theory, statistics_experimental_design

Cited by

4 citations across 4 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.)

    Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract

    The abstract reports that 71% of witnesses who discussed an event later recalled items acquired only in that discussion, a concrete mechanism by which co-witness accounts cease to be independent.

    “A significant proportion (71%) of witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

• 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.

    Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract

    The abstract supports memory conformity among co-witnesses who discussed the event (71% recalled discussion-acquired items), but it states no general independence condition for triangulation.

    “A significant proportion (71%) of witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

Domain-specific

• Memory conformity
  • Eyewitness implications are stated as research-grounded risk and uncertainty, never as conclusions about a particular person or proceeding.
• Misinformation Effect
  • It rewrites the memory rather than sitting beside it as a separately labeled later fact. Not dependent on deliberate deception. Innocuous-seeming interview questions, casual conversations with co-witnesses, and incidental news coverage produce contamination at comparable magnitudes.

    This sourceA memory-conformity study in which co-witnesses who discussed an event went on to mistake details they had only heard about for things they had seen (71% of discussers).

    Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract

    “A significant proportion (71%) of witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

Verification

Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.

Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 3 of 4 citations: 3 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.

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