Original Papers

Polish Psychological Bulletin

2013, vol. 44(1), 85-91
DOI -10.2478/ppb-2013-0009

Malwina Szpitalak*
Romuald Polczyk*

Promoting eyewitness testimony quality: Warning vs. reinforced self-affirmation

as methods of reduction of the misinformation effect
Abstract: In a typical experiment on the misinformation effect, subjects first watch some event, afterwards read a description
of it which in the experimental group includes some incorrect details, and answer questions relating to the original event.
Typically, subjects in the misled experimental group report more false details than those from the control group.
The main purpose of the presented study was to compare two methods of reducing the misinformation effect, namely
warning against misinformation and reinforced self-affirmation. The reinforced self-affirmation consists of two elements:
the participants recall their greatest achievements of life, and are being given a positive feedback about their performance
in a memory task.
The obtained results showed that the reinforced self-affirmation was more effective than warning, although the latter also
caused a significant reduction of the vulnerability to misinformation.
Key words: misinformation effect, warning, reinforced self-affirmation, eyewitness testimony, reducing misinformation
effect

Introduction
Misinformation effect
The misinformation effect consists in the decrement in
eyewitness report accuracy arising after exposure to misinformation concerning the original event. Technically, it
refers to including by a witness into his/her testimony details inconsistent with the original event, originating from
sources other than the event itself (Polczyk, under revision). This phenomenon has been widely explored since
early seventies (seminal work: Loftus, Miller & Burns,
1978; Pezdek, 1977).
The typical experimental procedure used to explore
the misinformation effect consists of three phases. In the
first phase, participants typically watch a video clip or a sequence of slides, which is called original material. Next,
they are exposed to the postevent material which, in the experimental group, contains some misleading information.
For example, in the original material the robber had a gun,
but it was said in the postevent material that he had a knife.
Afterwards, subjects are asked to answer questions about
original material, including questions referring to the misled details. Numerous experiments using various modifica-

tions of this basic paradigm confirmed and replicated the

finding that the accuracy of misled subjects as regards the
misleading questions is much lower compared to non-misled ones (for a review, see: Loftus, 2005; Polczyk, 2007;
Wright & Loftus, 1998).
The misinformation effect is being intensively researched, mainly because of its obvious relevance for the
applied forensic psychology. It may also be relevant e.g. for
political psychology, advertising or marketing (compare:
Braun, Ellis & Loftus, 2002; Loftus & Banaji, 1989).
The main areas of the research on the misinformation
effect deal with analyzing the mechanisms of the misinformation effect (e.g. Bekerian & Bowers, 1983; Blank, 1998;
McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985) and its determinants (for a
review see: Polczyk, 2007). Another important area concerns the methods or procedures by which the misinformation effect might be reduced. Such research is extremely
important as the vulnerability to misinformation is a phenomenon of obvious importance for the applied forensic
psychology. However, the literature on such methods is
scarce. As reducing the misinformation effect is the main
topic of the present article, we provide a review of existent
ideas or methods how to reduce the misinformation effect.

* Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University Al. Mickiewicza 3 31-120, Krakw e-mail: [email protected];
romuald.polczyk@uj,edu.pl

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Malwina Szpitalak, Romuald Polczyk

Reducing misinformation effect

Warning against misinformation. This is the most
straightforward idea for inoculating against misinformation
in the context of eyewitness memory and misinformation
effect, still researched nowadays, studied experimentally
from the very beginning of the research on the misinformation effect. It consists in warning subjects against possible
discrepancies between the original and postevent materials.
The first experiment on warning of this kind was presented by Greene, Flynn and Loftus (1982). They pointed
to four possible reasons, why warning may reduce vulnerability to misinformation. First, if warning is presented before the original event, it may make the participants memorize the content of the original material better, making it
therefore more resistant to misinformation. Second, if the
warning was issued after presenting the original event, it
might have made the subjects to rehearse its content, therefore improving the memory of it and increasing resistance
against misinformation. Third, warning may cause a more
thorough processing of the postevent material. Finally,
warning may result in a more careful answering the questions included in final test.
To verify these options, Greene et al. (1982, Experiment
1) conducted an experiment in which the moment of warning was manipulated: before the original material, between
the original and postevent materials; after the postevent
material and before the final test, or not at all. Greene et al.
(1982) found that the resistance to misinformation was the
greatest in the group who received the warning before reading the postevent text. Finally, Greene et al. concluded that
the effectiveness of warning consists in deep and thoughtful processing the postevent material.
Further research into the warning as a method of reducing the misinformation effect produced mixed results, from
a total elimination of yielding to misinformation (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989), to the complete lack of its efficacy
(Neuschatz, Payne, Lampinen & Toglia, 2001; Zaragoza
& Lane, 1994) Some light on this issue may be shed by
the results of an experiment conducted by Polczyk (2007),
who found that warning was effective in the case of a very
distinct and vivid original detail, but not in the case of an
item which was difficult to notice in the original material.
This result suggests that an important prerequisite for the
warning to be effective is the ability to detect discrepancies
between the original and postevent materials. If the original
detail is very difficult to detect, for example because it is
quite peripheral, warned subjects simply do not know what
is the misinformation. If, on the other hand, the original
detail is easy to spot, it is also easy to detect discrepancies.
In such a situation, warning against discrepancies directly
informs the subjects what is the wrong answer.
Some paradoxical effects of warning subjects should
be mentioned here, namely, the tainted truth effect (Echterhoff, Groll & Hirst, 2007). It consists in poorer memory

functioning among persons who were not misled, yet they

were warned against nonexistent inconsistencies between
the original and postevent materials.
Cognitive interview. In its current form (Fisher &
Geiselman, 1992), the cognitive interview includes several
techniques aiming at establishing a good rapport between
the interviewee and the interviewer and enhancing good
communication. It also includes four memory techniques:
mental reinstating of the context of the event, reporting
everything, recounting events in the reverse chronological
order, and adopting different perspectives while recalling
events, e.g. as if the eyewitness saw the event from a
different place. In a number of research, the cognitive interview proved to enhance the quality of testimony substantially (a review: Memon, Meissner & Fraser, 2010).
Some studies indicated that the cognitive interview may
be promising as a method of reducing the vulnerability to
misinformation, although not all empirical findings confirmed it.
For example, Holliday and Albon (2004) found that
the cognitive interview reduced susceptibility to misinformation in children. Holliday, Humphries, Milne, Memon,
Houlder, Lyons and Bull (in press) reported that it was effective in reducing the misinformation effect among elderly people. However, its efficacy proved to be poor among
adults (Centofanti & Reece, 2006).
Arousal. In just one research it turned out that arousal
induced after presenting misinformation may inoculate
against it (English & Nielson, 2010). In this research, after
the original material and the misinformation, the participants watched a film clip, which in one group was arousing (a live-action oral surgery), in the other was neutral.
English and Nielson (2010) found that when tested for the
memory of the original event one week later, the participants who watched the arousing clip yielded to significantly fewer misinformation items than the group who did not
watch the arousing clip.
Reinforced self-affirmation. In 2012, Szpitalak designed
a method for reducing the vulnerability to misinformation,
which she called reinforced self-affirmation (RSA). It is
based on a situational improvement of a persons self-esteem, accomplished by a combination of self-affirmation
and positive feedback. Self-affirmation consists in making
the participants write down all their greatest life achievements, whereas positive feedback results from a manipulated memory task (see detailed description in the Procedure
below).
The main premise for developing such a procedure was
the assumption that an enhancement of the self-esteem,
even temporary, causes an enhancement of self-confidence.
In other words, it was expected that thinking about ones
achievements activates positive self-image, which is con-

Reduction of the misinformation effect

firmed by getting positive feedback from an objective

source (from the experimenter) results in greater self-confidence. The greater self-confidence should in turn lead to
a greater resistance to influence. It should be so because
enhanced self-confidence should be connected with lesser
need for relying on external opinions, cues and suggestions when making any decisions. A self-confident person
should be prone to use his/her own judgment and therefore
be less likely to yield to outer influence, including influence in the form of the misinformation about formerly seen
events. This assumption is already somewhat supported
by existing data, for example, Saunders (2012) found that
low self-esteem (as measured by Rosenbergs Self-Esteem
Scale (1965) is connected with higher yielding to misinformation.
The RSA proved very effective in reducing the misinformation effect. In sum, until now its efficacy was replicated in seven experiments (Szpitalak, 2012; Szpitalak &
Polczyk, in press; Szpitalak & Polczyk, under revision).
Moreover, it proved effective also outside the context of the
memory misinformation effect, namely, in making persons
more resistant to the door-in-the-face technique (Szpitalak,
Polczyk & Cyganiewicz, under revision). The door-in-theface technique consists in first making a large request, difficult to accomplish. If a person rejects the large request
(which he/she usually does), he/she becomes more prone
to accomplish a smaller request compared to a situation in
which the smaller request was not preceded by the large
one (Cialdini, Vincent, Lewis, Catalan, Wheeler & Darby,
1975). In the experiment by Szpitalak et al. (under revision) the RSA reduced the efficacy of this technique to the
level of a group in which the smaller request was not preceded by a large one.
It is worth noting that none of the both elements of the
RSA, that is, the self-affirmation and the positive feedback
seems to be effective when applied separately: people who
did a self-affirmation but were not given a positive feedback were not more resistant to misinformation than those
who did not a self-affirmation (Szpitalak, 2012). Similarly,
the positive feedback without self-affirmation did not produce any reduction of the misinformation effect (Szpitalak,
2012). Thus, it seems that only the combination of internal and external sources really enhances self-esteem:
the self-affirmation done by the participant him/herself and
positive feedback obtained from somebody else gives a cumulative effect needed for a real effect.
Hypotheses
In the presented experiment we wanted to compare two
methods of reducing the misinformation effect warning
and reinforced self-affirmation. First of all, we wanted to
replicate the misinformation effect. Thus, in the first hypothesis we assumed that the mean number of answers consistent with misinformation would be higher in the misled
group, compared to the control one. Secondly, we expected

87

that warning against discrepancies between original and

postevent materials would cause increased resistance to
misinformation. In other words, the mean number of answers consistent with misinformation should be lower in
the warned misled group than in the non-warned misled
group.
Thirdly, we assumed that the efficacy of the RSA would
be replicated the mean number of answers consistent with
misinformation ought to be lower in the group in which
RSA was administered, compared to the misled group
without RSA. It is important to note that in the planned
research the RSA was placed after exposing the postevent
material. In the majority of experiments performed so far
(e.g. Szpitalak, 2012; Szpitalak & Polczyk, 2012), it took
place before the postevent material. It is however important
to verify whether it is effective when placed after the misinformation. Otherwise it would be difficult to make any use
from it in real life situations. In practice, any technique directed at immunizing against misinformation may only be
administered after the witness has already been exposed to
possible false information, for example in the mass media,
TV, or other witnesses.
We could find no premises as to what method of reducing the misinformation effect should be more effective
- the warning or the reinforced self-affirmation. Thus, the
comparison of these two methods was an exploratory part
of the analysis.

Method
Participants
Two hundred and nine (127 female, 82 male) students
(except psychology students) took part in the experiment.
Mean age was 19.17 (SD = 1.75). No gratification for the
participation was given. The participants were recruited
mainly from the university database and participated for
credit points.

Materials
1. The original material: an audio recording (male voice)
of a duration of 1 min 57 sec, presenting the fictious
planned reform, consisting in introducing a final
exam at the end of the education. The speaker, intruduced as one of the creators of the reform, elaborated on
various advanteges of introducing such an exam; thus,
the speech was informative but also persuasive
2. The postevent material: a description of the original
material, which in the experimental group contained six
misleading details.
3. The memory test - a set of 10 open-ended questions,
including six critical ones.
4. A list of 60 nouns from various categories to remember,
e.g. forest, horse, needle, kitchen, pen

88

Malwina Szpitalak, Romuald Polczyk

5. Fillers (unrelated questionnaires), not connected with

the aim of the study, used to fill in time intervals between the parts of the procedure
Procedure
The experimental design used in the study was 2 3
(misinformation: present / absent; manipulation: warning / RSA / none). The experiment was run in groups
from 4 to 11 participants. The experimenter introduced
herself as a scientist from the Jagiellonian University,
performing research for the National Council for Higher
Education, concerning a planned reform of Polish universities. Similar procedure was used earlier by Apsler
and Sears (1968) and Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman
(1981). The experimenter explained the purpose of the
planned reform and afterwards the participants listened
to a recording about it. In order to make the procedure
more plausible, the subjects were asked to give written
opinions about the reform. After 15 minutes, participants read a description of the recording which for half
of them included six misleading items. For example, the
Jagiellonian University mentioned in the original material was replaced in the postevent material with the
University of Bialystok. Then, in the group with the
RSA, the first phase of this procedure was performed:
the participants were asked to write down the greatest
achievements of their lives (as many as they wanted).
The subjects were given the following rationale for the
filler questionnaires, as well as for the procedure of reinforced self-affirmation: We would like to research
the determinants of the attitude toward the planned
reform Afterwards, they were asked to memorize as
many words from a list of 60 words as they were able
to. After two minutes they had to write down all words
they could recall and were given positive feedback
about their performance, namely, they were told that an
average number of remembered words among persons
of the same age is 9.3. This number was false in order
to give positive feedback, it was about 1.5 SD lower
than real average number noted in the pilot study. This
constituted the second part of the RSA procedure.
In the same time, the participants from the control and
the warning groups were to make a written description of
the way from their house to the lab. They were also asked
to memorize as many words from a list of 60 words as they
were able to, but were not given any feedback. After 10
minutes, the participants were given the final memory test,
presented as the last task to be completedwhich in the
warning group was preceded by a written warning against
possible discrepancies between the original and postevent
materials.
To sum up, there were three groups of participants (both
in the misled and non-misled groups): with RSA, with
warning, and without any manipulation directed to reduce
the susceptibility to misinformation.

Results
The open-ended answers in the final test were recoded as: 1 - answer consistent with misinformation; 0
- all other answers or lack of answer. The answers 1
were summed up across all six critical questions, giving
a numeric estimate of the susceptibility to misinformation
ranging from 0 to 6. In Table 1 descriptive statistics for the
mean number of answers consistent with misinformation
are presented.

Table 1. The mean number of answers consistent with

misinformation
Factor or interaction
Method
Method
Method
M
M
Method M
Method M
Method M
Method M
Method M
Method M
L
d

Levels of factors
Method
M
none
warning
RSA
non-misled
misled
none
non-misled
none
misled
warning non-misled
warning misled
RSA
non-misled
RSA
misled

N
67
76
66
97
112
36
31
35
41
26
40

Answers consistent to misinformation

Mean
SD
95% CI
1.43
1.85
0.99 - 1.88
1.26
1.56
0.91 - 1.62
1.03
1.44
0.68 - 1.38
0.20
0.42
0.11 - 0.28
2.15
1.72
1.83 - 2.47
0.06
0.23
-0.02 - 0.13
3.03
1.56
2.46 - 3.60
0.26
0.44
0.10 - 0.41
2.12
1.66
1.60 - 2.65
0.31
0.55
0.09 - 0.53
1.50
1.63
0.98 - 2.02

Legend:
Method: method of reducing the susceptibility to misinformation
M misinformation
RSA reinforced self-affirmation

The first hypothesis was verified by computing the main

effect of the influence of misinformation on the number of
answers consistent with misinformation. The hypothesis
was confirmed, as the difference between the misled and
control group was significant and quite remarkable in its
magnitude (F[1,203] = 138.01; p < 0.001; n2p = 0.40). Then,
the interaction between misinformation and manipulation
was analyzed; it was statistically significant (F[2,203] = 8.86;
p < 0.001; n2p = 0.08; see: Figure 1).

Figure 1. Mean number of answers consistent with misinformation as a

function of presence vs. absence of misinformation and the methods of
reducing the misinformation effect (significant differences are marked
with arrows).

Reduction of the misinformation effect

The results of planned comparisons comparing all combinations of levels of factors are presented in Tables 2 and 3.
As can be seen in Table 2, misled subjects performed worse
from control ones regardless of the method of reducing the
misinformation effect. Of greater importance however are
the comparisons done in the misled group among various
combinations of methods of reducing the misinformation
effect, presented in Table 3 and visualized on Figure 1.
To start with, misled warned persons were more resistant to misinformation then those from the control group,
which confirms the hypothesis two (see Table 3). The third
hypothesis was also confirmed participants engaged in
the reinforced self-affirmation procedure were less susceptible to misinformation than participants from the control
group. Finally, RSA proved more effective in reducing the
misinformation effect than did the warning (Table 3).
Table 2. Comparisons between misled and non-misled
groups in the mean number of answers consistent to
misinformation across all combinations of methods of
reducing the misinformation effect

Method
F
df
p
2p
none
98.73 1,203 < 0.001 0.49
warning 43.92 1,203 < 0.001 0.22
RSA
14.98 1,203 < 0.001 0.07
Table 3. Differences between groups in the mean number
of answers consistent to misinformation
Misinformation Comparisons of methods
F
df
p
2p
none
warning
0.48 1,203 0.488 < 0.01
Non-misled
none
RSA
0.64 1,203 0.424 < 0.01
warning
RSA
0.03 1,203 0.873 < 0.01
none
warning
9.79 1,203 0.002
0.05
Misled
none
RSA
27.43 1,203 < 0.001 0.14
warning
RSA
5.24 1,203 0.023
0.03
L

Legend:
M misinformation
RSA reinforced self-affirmation

Discussion
As was expected, misled persons were more vulnerable
to misinformation than non-misled ones. This confirmed
the first hypotheses and replicated the well-known misinformation effect. This is but another warning how vulnerable the memory can be to distortions, at least in some circumstances.
The second hypothesis was also confirmed: warning
was efficient in reducing the misinformation effect. This
result is consistent with outcomes of many other studies
(e.g. Blank, 1998; Chambers & Zaragoza, 2001; Echterhoff, Hirst & Hussy, 2005; Ecker, Lewandowsky & Tang,
2010; Greene et al., 1982; Wright, 1993). It is also worth

89

noticing that there are also results suggesting that warning

might be ineffective (e.g. Neuschatz et al., 2001; Zaragoza
& Lane, 1994). As mentioned in the Introduction, according to Polczyk (2007), warning can only be effective if a
person is aware of the discrepancies between original material and misinformation. Unfortunately, the three-step procedure used in the presented experiment does not allow for
replicating this finding.
An important finding of the present study is the replication of the effectiveness of the reinforced self-affirmation
procedure in reducing the misinformation effect, applied
after the postevent material. As was mentioned in the Introduction, the RSA proved successful in reducing the misinformation effect many times (Szpitalak, 2012; Szpitalak
& Polczyk, in press), but in most of the research it was
applied before the postevent material. This somewhat limits the practical usefulness of the RSA as a method of immunizing eyewitnesses against misinformation, because in
reality any influence can be exerted on a witness after he/
she had already been exposed to possible misinformation.
When a witness is being interviewed at a police station,
he/she might have already been exposed to any amount
of information about the event he/she is telling about. Because of that, if the RSA were only efficient when applied
before the postevent material, its practical value would be
doubtful. Fortunately, this is not the case: in the research
presented in this article, RSA reduced the vulnerability to
misinformation when applied after it. This is a replication
of the results obtained by Szpitalak (2012).
Introducing the RSA after the postevent material comes
with the cost of difficulties with comparing the results with
those stemming from research in which RSA was placed
between the original and postevent materials. Such comparisons cannot be made with the present results and require further research.
Reinforced self-affirmation was more efficient in reducing the vulnerability to misinformation than warning
the participants against possible discrepancies between the
original event and the description of it. Trying to explain
this fact, we may start with analyzing the very mechanism
by which a warning works. As described in the Introduction, the efficacy of a warning was attributed to, for example, deeper and more thoughtful processing of the postevent
material (Greene et al., 1982). As a result, more discrepancies might have been discovered by a participants, allowing
him/her to choose the correct answer. This however is only
effective if the subject is quite sure what was presented in
the original material, and what was mentioned in the postevent text. When the participant feels that different information was presented in the original and postevent materials, but is not confident about his/her memory, the final
answer may still be wrong. The greater efficiency of RSA
may be based on the processing of items about which the
participants are not confident whether their own memory is
correct. In the warning condition, the subjects are alerted

Malwina Szpitalak, Romuald Polczyk

90

to the possibility of discrepancies, but are not particularly

motivated to process them, nor are they encouraged to trust
their own memories. In contrast, if RSA indeed, as hypothesized, enhances self-confidence, then the processing of
dubious cases may be different: when a participant is not
absolutely sure about what he/she has seen, but in reality
his/her remembrance is correct, the elevated self-confidence may help to rely on his/her own memory, therefore
promoting correct answers.
One question which remains open is the problem of
time intervals between the three parts of the procedure.
They were rather short, in order to fit the procedure into the
standard duration of classes in the school (45min). Whether
the efficacy of RSA would preserve when the time intervals
were, say, days or weeks, is unknown at present and needs
further research. Also, the generalizability of the results obtained over other populations, for example people at different age than students needs further research.
Another interesting question arises, if and to what extent
are the effects of RSA generalizable, that is, whether it may
immune against other kinds of influence, or just against
mnestic misinformation effect only. In its current form the
RSA relies heavily on memory phenomena - the positive
feedback refers to the quality of memory. It is therefore
possible that the effects of RSA may limit to memory phenomena only. On the other hand, as mentioned in the Introduction, there is one experiment in which RSA proved
successful in immunizing against quite other form of influence, namely the door-in-the-face technique (Szpitalak
et al., under revision). This result of course needs replication, but seems promising. It may suggest that although the
RSA itself is based on memory, the resulting enhancement
of self-confidence may be effective behind the context of
influencing memory reports. However, at present no direct
conclusions concerning the generalizability of the RSA in
areas other than the misinformation effect are possible.
This problem needs further research.

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