Citation

Stephenson GM, Wagner W. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 1989; 3(3): 227-236.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/acp.2350030303

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Studies have shown that dyads and groups place significantly more confidence in wrong answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event than do individuals. This experiment was designed to discover whether this misplaced confidence is influenced by prior free collaborative recall of the events in question. The results clearly indicated that prior group remembering lessens the effect, and improves the testimonial validity of both individual and group answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event. Taken in conjunction with other studies, the results imply that two or more witnesses of an event may profitably discuss what happened, but that they may best be interrogated separately in order to maximize the information available to the interrogator and to minimize misplaced confidence.

Language: en