Citation

Wessel I, Zandstra AR, Hengeveld HM, Moulds ML. Memory 2014; 23(3): 437-444.

Affiliation

a Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology , University of Groningen , Groningen , The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/09658211.2014.895384

PMID

24628679

Abstract

Collaborative inhibition refers to the phenomenon that when several people work together to produce a single memory report, they typically produce fewer items than when the unique items in the individual reports of the same number of participants are combined (i.e., nominal recall). Yet, apart from this negative effect, collaboration may be beneficial in that group members remove errors from a collaborative report. Collaborative inhibition studies on memory for emotional stimuli are scarce. Therefore, the present study examined both collaborative inhibition and collaborative error reduction in the recall of the details of emotional material in a laboratory setting. Female undergraduates (n = 111) viewed a film clip of a fatal accident and subsequently engaged in either collaborative (n = 57) or individual recall (n = 54) in groups of three. The results show that, across several detail categories, collaborating groups recalled fewer details than nominal groups. However, overall, nominal recall produced more errors than collaborative recall. The present results extend earlier findings on both collaborative inhibition and error reduction to the recall of affectively laden material. These findings may have implications for the applied fields of forensic and clinical psychology.

Language: en