University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
In line with researches on qualitative differences between majority and minority influence on memory (e.g. Nemeth et all, 1990) and following the assumptions implied by the etymological Latin root – cum-fidere – of the word confidence, we analysed how different social pressures influence not only individual free recall but also the degree of confidence assigned to memories. We induced a majority pressure using Asch (1951) paradigm (five confederates vs. one naive subject) and a minority pressure, using Moscovici (1976) paradigm (two confederates applying the pressure and three confederates resilient to the pressure vs. one naïve subject). 60 participants were requested to recognize if words presented in a list were included in another, immediately preceding, list. Three couples of lists were created, each couple referring to a different category. Each list included 9 words of a same category (Rosch, 1975). In each couple, the second list was identical to the first one, excluding the crucial item, a word of the same category substituting another word of the first list. The first time, naïve participants answered before confederates, instructed to correctly detect the error (baseline). The second and third time, confederates wrongly recognised crucial items. 15 minutes after the third recognition task, participants received an individual free recall test. Both public recognition tasks and private recall tests were associated with a private judgment of confidence, referred to one’s own responses. Results show that majority pressure induces a higher level of confidence on socially influenced errors, while under minority pressure a higher confidence is assigned to correct remembering.
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