Citation

Carpenter AC, Krendl AC. Soc. Neurosci. 2016; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences , Indiana University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/17470919.2016.1253610

PMID

27785975

Abstract

Eyewitness testimony has been shown to be unreliable and susceptible to false memories. Whether eyewitness memory errors are influenced by the victim's group membership (relative to both the eyewitness and perpetrator) impacts memory error is underexplored. The current study used complementary behavioral and neuroimaging approaches to test the hypothesis that intragroup conflict heightens participants' susceptibility to subsequent false memories. Healthy young adults witnessed and later answered questions about events in which the perpetrator and victim were either 1) identified as ingroup members relative to each other and the eyewitness, 2) outgroup members relative to the eyewitness, but not each other, or 3) outgroup members relative to each other (Experiments 1a and 1b). When perpetrators and victims were ingroup members (intragroup conflict), participants showed heightened false memory rates. Moreover, false memories increased upon crime realization. Neuroimaging data analysis revealed that salient (as compared to ambiguous) intragroup conflict elicited heightened activation in neural regions associated with resolving cognitive conflict (anterior cingulate cortex; ACC). Increased functional connectivity between the ACC and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with subsequent false memories (Experiment 2).

RESULTS suggest that the social salience of the intragroup conflict may have been associated with participants' increased susceptibility to false memories.

Language: en