Echterhoff, Gerald; Lang, Sonja; Krämer, Nicole; Higgins, E. Tory:
Audience-tuning effects on memory. The role of audience status in sharing reality.
In: Social Psychology, Jg. 40 (2009), Heft 3, S. 150 - 163
2009Artikel/Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
PsychologieFakultät für Ingenieurwissenschaften » Informatik und Angewandte Kognitionswissenschaft
Titel:
Audience-tuning effects on memory. The role of audience status in sharing reality.
Autor*in:
Echterhoff, Gerald;Lang, Sonja;Krämer, NicoleUDE
GND
123292786
LSF ID
47899
ORCID
0000-0001-7535-870XORCID iD
Sonstiges
der Hochschule zugeordnete*r Autor*in
;
Higgins, E. Tory
Erscheinungsjahr:
2009

Abstract:

Examines audience-tuning effects on memory. Specifically investigates (1) if rather global perceptions and interpretations, such as a co-witness' liking for a suspect, can impact eyewitness memory for a forensically relevant incident and (2) if this impact depends on features of the audience. Participants were 64 university students (mean age 24 years). After observing a video in which the target persons could be perceived and described in varying ways, student communicators tuned their description of an employee to either an equal-status audience (a student temp) or a higher-status audience (a company board member). Though audience-tuning occurred under both conditions, a memory bias was confirmed in the equal-status condition only: Information that was not directly related to the incident had a strong effect on participants' representation of the event. When discovering that their audience favored the target person (also finding him to be less responsible for the incident), participants actually assigned a weaker penalty to him. A simple likability judgment rendered by participants' audience was enough to elicit audience-congruent biases on eyewitness' memory and judgment. These results demonstrate how audience-congruent biases influence eyewitness' memories and judgment.