René Kopietz

Registered Replication Report

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal overshadowing” effect (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). More recent studies suggested that this effect might be substantially smaller than first reported. Given uncertainty about the effect size, the influence of this finding in the memory literature, and its practical importance for police procedures, we conducted two collections of preregistered direct replications (RRR1 and RRR2) that differed only in the order of the description task and a filler task. In RRR1, when the description task immediately followed the robbery, participants who provided a description were 4% less likely to select the robber than were those in the control condition. In RRR2, when the description was delayed by 20 min, they were 16% less likely to select the robber. These findings reveal a robust verbal overshadowing effect that is strongly influenced by the relative timing of the tasks. The discussion considers further implications of these replications for our understanding of verbal overshadowing.

Shared reality in intergroup communication: Increasing the epistemic authority of an out-group audience.

Communicators typically tune messages to their audience’s attitude. Such audience tuning biases communicators’ memory for the topic toward the audience’s attitude to the extent that they create a shared reality with the audience. To investigate shared reality in intergroup communication, we first established that a reduced memory bias after tuning messages to an out-group (vs. in-group) audience is a subtle index of communicators’ denial of shared reality to that out-group audience (Experiments 1a and 1b). We then examined whether the audience-tuning memory bias might emerge when the out-group audience’s epistemic authority is enhanced, either by increasing epistemic expertise concerning the communication topic or by creating epistemic consensus among members of a multiperson out-group audience. In Experiment 2, when Germans communicated to a Turkish audience with an attitude about a Turkish (vs. German) target, the audience-tuning memory bias appeared. In Experiment 3, when the audience of German communicators consisted of 3 Turks who all held the same attitude toward the target, the memory bias again appeared. The association between message valence and memory valence was consistently higher when the audience’s epistemic authority was high (vs. low). An integrative analysis across all studies also suggested that the memory bias increases with increasing strength of epistemic inputs (epistemic expertise, epistemic consensus, and audience-tuned message production). The findings suggest novel ways of overcoming intergroup biases in intergroup relations.

When Do We Confuse Self and Other in Action Memory? Reduced False Memories of Self-Performance after Observing Actions by an Out-Group vs. In-Group Actor

Observing another person performing an action can lead to a false memory of having performed the action oneself – the observation-inflation effect. In the experimental paradigm, participants first perform or do not perform simple actions, and then observe another person perform some of these actions. The observation-inflation effect is found when participants later remember performing actions that they have merely observed. In this case, self and other are confused in action memory. We examined social conditions of this self-other confusion when remembering actions, specifically whether the effect depends on the observed actor’s group membership. In our experiment, we manipulated group membership based on physical appearance, specifically complexion of the hands. Fair-skinned participants observed either an in-group (i.e., fair-skinned) or an out-group (i.e., dark-skinned) actor. Our results revealed that the observed actor’s group membership moderated the observation-inflation effect: False memories were significantly reduced when the actor was from the out-group (vs. in-group). We found no difference to a control condition in which the actor wore black gloves, suggesting that distinctiveness of perceptual or sensory features alone (due to the out-group member’s dark skin) is not critical. We discuss these findings in light of social-neuroscience studies demonstrating the impact of an observed person’s group membership on motor simulation. Overall, our findings suggest that action memory can be affected by a ubiquitous feature of people’s social perception, that is, group-based social categorization of others.

Remembering the 2006 Football World Cup in Germany: Epistemic and social consequences of perceived memory sharedness

According to shared-reality theory, the sharing of memories satisfies the need for confident knowledge (an epistemic consequence) and belongingness (a social-affiliative consequence). In two experiments, German participants remembered a public event with collective importance—the 2006 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Germany. We examined whether inducing perceptions of sharedness increases confidence in one’s memory of the event (an epistemic consequence) and social identification with the national group (an affiliative consequence). Because episodic, but not semantic, memories entail the reconstruction of the social context of the original experience, they should elicit feelings of shared relevance to a greater extent than do semantic memories. Consistent with our rationale, memory confidence, perceptions of shared relevance, and identification with Germany were enhanced after participants recalled episodic (vs semantic) memories regarding the World Cup. In Experiment 2, we added a more direct manipulation of perceived sharedness: participants were asked to think about people with similar (vs dissimilar) memories. We found that memory confidence, perceptions of shared relevance, and identification with Germany were greater in the high sharedness conditions. In both experiments, the effects on memory confidence and identification were mediated by perceived shared relevance. Overall, the findings demonstrate important cognitive and social consequences of collective memory.

Sozial-kognitive Aspekte von Entscheidungen

In der Psychologie sprechen wir von einer Entscheidung, wenn eine praferenzielle Wahl zwischen wenigstens zwei Optionen mit einem Mindestmas an subjektiv wahrgenommener Wahlfreiheit getroffen wird. Dabei kann die Entscheidung das Unterlassen eines bestimmten Verhaltens oder auch das Ausfuhren einer spezifischen Handlung bedeuten bzw.