The role of emotion and self-reference in the creation of false memories for suggested events

The present studies used an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to examine the effects of emotional elaboration on the creation of false memories for suggested events. Participants viewed a video and then were exposed to misleading information about it. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants who emotionally elaborated on the suggested events were more likely to indicate they believed the false events had been in the video than participants who did not elaborate on them. Experiment 2 expanded on these findings by demonstrating that emotional elaboration can actually be more effective than another type of elaboration at leading participants to believe they had seen these suggested items in the video. The one exception to this finding is that men did not evidence an emotional elaboration effect in a task where they elaborated on the emotion of another person, thus indicating possible gender differences in empathy. However, both men and women who elaborated on emotional details of suggested events in reference to their own personal experiences were more likely to create false memories for suggested events The present studies demonstrate the powerful effects of emotion and self-reference on false memory creation and have several real-world implications for forensic and therapeutic interviews.