Effect of trust on social conformity in Recognition Memory 

PROJECT PResentation

Mentor: Prof. Amitabh Mukherjee

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

Pranjal Saxena Y9424

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

 Social Conformity:•Act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours.

Why Recognition memory?•Relevant in Eyewitness testimony.•Peer influence altering memories of incidents.

Friends and Strangers: •Conformity is larger among friends than strangers.•Exception : McKelvey, Wendy; Kerr, Nancy H. (1988) 

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

OBJECTIVESOBJECTIVES

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

• Database of 130 images:   onemillionpeople.com

• A trial: 4 confederates ,1 participant.• Participant convinced to be a part of a “memory test”.

•Encoding :50 images  shown with a gap of 2 seconds.• Retrieval: Another set of images. Part. Identify new and old images.Part. Respond loudly after the Conf. 

• Conf. have doctored responses written on their sheets.

•10 trials each for strangers and friends cases.• Hits(no of correct recognitions of old) • false alarms(no of false recognition of new items)

EXPERIMENTEXPERIMENT

Image cited from "Graded effects of Social Conformity on Recognition memory"

Plotted Separately

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

RESULTSRESULTS1> Experiment1 : Setting a base case:

Establishing that memory is better than chance and evaluating memory efficiency in absence of conformity.

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

2> Experiment2 : Effects of conformity

STRANGERS FRIENDS

COMPARISON: DISTRIBUTION IN OLD AND NEW

No of correct confederates

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

DISCUSSION

Conformity effects well established:Correct responses of the participant decreased as No. of incorrect Conf. Increase from 0 to 4.Coherence with study of Axmacher[1].

Conformity stronger with friends than strangers:This case being Informational Influence(conforming to give accurate information)McKelvey, Wendy; Kerr, Nancy H. (1988): opposite results

oCase being Normative InfluenceoConforming to be acceptable and liked by a group.

Conformity effects larger on Hits than False Alarms:More likely to forget old memories rather than form new memories.Replication of Axmacher’s results in short version.Diverts from previous studies.

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

FURTHER STUDIESFURTHER STUDIES

SE 367: Introduction to Cognitive Science

REFERENCESREFERENCES[1]: Axmacher N, Gossen A, Elger CE, Fell J (2010) Graded Effects of Social Conformity on Recognition Memory. PLoS ONE 5(2): e9270. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009270

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

[3]: Schneider DM, Watkins MJ (1996) Response conformity in recognition testing. Psychon Bull Rev 3: 481-485.

[4]: Reysen MB (2005) The effects of conformity on recognition judgements. Memory 13: 87-94.

[5]: McKelvey, Wendy; Kerr, Nancy H. (1988). "Differences in conformity among friends and strangers". Psychological Reports 62 (3): 759-62

THANK YOU!!THANK YOU!!