Marsh Et Al 1997 Contributions of Inadequate Source Monitoring to Unconscious Plagiarism During Idea Generation

8/18/2019 Marsh Et Al 1997 Contributions of Inadequate Source Monitoring to Unconscious Plagiarism During Idea Generation

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Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition

1997, Vol. 2 3 , No. 4, 886-89 7

Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0278-7393/97/$3.00

Contributions of Inadequate Source M onitoring to Unconscious

Plagiarism D uring Idea G eneration

Richard L. Marsh, Joshua

D .

Landau, and Jason L. Hicks

University of Georgia

Participants engaged in a creative idea-generation task that required them to monitor source to

devise ideas not offered previously by others. In Experiment 1, inadvertent plagiarism

(cryptomnesia) occurred mo re often when participants were generating ideas than w hen they

were taking a recognition test. In Experiment 2, focusing participants on the origin of their

ideas during generation resembled the focusing that occurs in recognition performance and

reduced plagiarism. In Experiment 3, a speeded-response condition increased inadvertent

plagiarism by mimicking conditions in which people cannot or do not adequately monitor

source. In Experiment 4, plagiarism was reduced both when participants offered their new

ideas in a one-on-one context as compared with a more anonymous group setting and when

participants w ere specifically instructed to avoid plagiarism . The results are discussed in terms

of source-monitoring decision criteria and the conscious and unconscious processes that

support that monitoring.

In a variety of situations, properly ascribing the origin of a

thought, an idea, or a memory is crucial for normal human

functioning (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). Auto-

biographical recollection is probably the best example of the

human need to be able to avoid source-monitoring errors

(e.g., Cohen, 1989; Rubin, 1986). Recalling a specific

experience in one's life depends on one's ability to assess

confidently and accurately that the event happened and not

that someone else related it as a story or that it occurred in a

dream. There are m any uses of memory, however, for which

the determination of source is unnecessary and even impos-

sible. In Brewer and Pani's (1983) taxonomy of memory, for

example,

personal

memories are acquired through a single

exposure (e.g., what one ate for lunch). These memories

seem to require that source-monitoring processes be en-

gaged to verify accurately that the event occurred. In

contrast, generic and skill mem ories do not appear to invoke

very much processing related to source ascription. Generic

memories result from repeated exposure to information and

can be either semantic (e.g., accessed through subjective lexicons

or timeless truths) or perceptual (e.g., knowing that a Dober-

man's ears are pointed rather than round). Skill mem ories include

cognitive skills such as knowing the rules of mathematics.

Although one m ay recall specific episodes related to the acquisi-

Richard L. Marsh, Joshua D. Landau, and Jason L. Hicks,

Department of Psychology, University of G eorgia.

This work was supported by grants from the University of Georgia

Research Foundation, Inc., and by Sigma Xi G rants-in-Aid.

Appreciation is expressed to Abraham Tesser for his helpful

comments in discussions of this w ork. We thank D. J. Amis, M ark

Wagerer, Robert Brown , Hesham Sharawy, Ted Parsons, and Shari

Nevins for their dedicated help in collecting and scoring the data.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Richard L. Marsh, Department of Psychology, University of

Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602 -3013. Electronic mail may be sent

via Internet to m [email protected].

tion of generic and skill memories, source monitoring does

not appear to be crucial to using that information.

Given that source monitoring is not necessarily required

for a variety of tasks that bring one's past experience to bear,

in this article we investigate the degree to which adequate

source-monitoring processes are invoked spontaneously.

Recently, the extensive literature on source monitoring and

related phenomena was comprehensively reviewed (Johnson

et al., 1993). Much of that literature used modified recogni-

tion memory tests to assess source monitoring as compared

with other indirect tests of source memory. By modified

these recognition tests required participants to determine the

original source through task instructions such as of the old

items, determine whether you gave it or another participant

did or of the items you generated, specify which you

spoke and which you imagined , and so forth. Although

source attributions have been made subsequent to recall

(e.g., Lindsay, 1990), many of those earlier tests of source

monitoring measured peo ple's abilities when source monitor-

ing was the primary cognitive task (e.g., Johnson & Raye,

1981; Johnson, Raye, Foiey, & Foley, 1981). Therefore,

modified recognition tests measure source-m onitoring perfor-

mance under best case conditions in which people are

specifically atten ding to origin information w ith task instruc-

tions that are simple and clear.

In contrast to a direct test of source, participants in this

study learned material that was critical to a later source-

monitoring task, but their source monitoring was in service

of performing a related, primary task. In brief, people tested

in these experiments were required to generate ideas to

problems in a group setting. Later, they were asked to

generate new ideas that neither they nor their fellow

participants had given before. Thus, for this task, partici-

pants were not provided w ith the ideas that were previously

generated and asked to d etermine their original sources (i.e.,

modified recognition); rather, they were asked to perform a

generative task that inherently required that source-

88 6

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232598172_Misleading_Suggestions_Can_Impair_Eyewitnesses'_Ability_to_Remember_Event_Details?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232598172_Misleading_Suggestions_Can_Impair_Eyewitnesses'_Ability_to_Remember_Event_Details?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==


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INADEQUATE SOURCE MONITORING

88

monitoring processes be engaged to offer genuinely new

ideas. In other words, participants had to be able to reject old

ideas to offer truly new ones. In each experiment, perfor-

mance on this generative task was compared with perfor-

mance on a modified recognition m emory test.

Many of the older studies on list discrimination (e.g.,

Hintzman, Block, & Summers, 1973) or intrusions in recall

(e.g., Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) similarly

required that source monitoring be performed in service of

some other task. What happens when task demands place

secondary, rather than primary, emphasis on source ascrip-

tion? Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, and Jasechko (1989) have

suggested that people may not spontaneously attempt to

recollect source and either largely ignore this important

cognitive component of the task or, perhaps, are able to

neglect it altogether. This latter possibility suggests that the

recollection of information and the ascription of its original

source can be separate cognitive acts (cf. Jacoby, Kelley,

Brown, & Jasechko, 1989).

In Johnson's source-monitoring framework (e.g., Johnson,

1988; Johnson et al., 1993), there are two kinds of decision

processes. First, determination of source can rely on heuris-

tic processing that inspects the am oun t of qualitative

aspects of activated information (e.g., perceptual detail,

affective comp onents, associated cognitive operations). Sec-

ond, source can also be determined by systematic processes

that are slower and more prone to disruption (e.g., a

plausibility check). In concert, then, heuristic and systematic

processes can guide and check one another, with their

mixture being determined by a person's goals and by the task

at hand (i.e., a person's adopted decision criteria). The

heuristic versus systematic distinction (as described by

Chaiken, Lieberman, & Eagly, 1989) proposes that system-

atic processing is likely to be controlled and intentional,

whereas heuristic processing may or may not be under

conscious control. With a slightly different emphasis, Jacoby

and his colleagues (e.g., Jacoby, 19 91; Jacoby, Kelley, &

Dywan, 1989) proposed that source determinations are

memorial ascriptions (or attributions) made by assessing

how fluently information comes to mind or is processed.

Cognitive processes that assess fluency, however, can be

opposed by effortful, conscious recollection. Both of these

accounts (as offered by Johnson and Jacoby and their

colleagues) describe an unconscious or heuristic set of

processes that can be opposed by a set of conscious

processes.

Our intuition is that source ascriptions, under some

circumstances, require m ore controlled (systematic) process-

ing. Clearly, the degree of controlled processing is deter-

mined by the person and the current set of task demands (cf.

Johnson et al., 1993). That is, the decision criteria that are

applied will affect the mixture (or balance) of heuristic

versus systematic processing on which source mo nitoring is

based. For example, a simple yes-no task about a particular

source tends to elicit more source m isattributions than does

asking about all potential sources (Dodson & Johnson,

1993). Similarly, the eyewitness suggestibility effect that is

often observed with recognition tests is substantially re-

duced by forcing people to consider all of the potential

alternative sources (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989). Given these

findings, in the current experiments we assessed the degree

to which systematic source-monitoring processes were spon-

taneously invoked when m emory for source was required in

service of another task (i.e., under source-monitoring con di-

tions that were not best case*'). We predicted that when

source monitoring is not the primary task, systematic

processing will be inadequate, and, therefore, people will

fail to use information that they could have used to avoid

source-monitoring errors.

In the experiments that follow, we adapted a generative

problem-solving paradigm from several studies that reported

a specific failure of source m onitoring known as cryptom ne-

sia, or inadvertent plagiarism (Brown & Halliday, 1991;

Brown, Jones, & Davis, 1995; Brown & Murphy, 1989;

Marsh & Bower, 1993; Marsh & Landau, 1995). In those

studies, people generated category exemplars in the pres-

ence of other participants (e.g., Brown & M urphy, 1989) or

offered solutions to word puzzles played against a computer

(e.g., Marsh & Landau, 1995). For a given participant in

both cases, information was either self-generated or offered

from another source. Later, participants were asked to

generate category exemplars or puzzle solutions that were

new and had not been offered before. Despite being adm on-

ished not to copy, participants who performed these tasks

inadvertently plagiarized a significant number of items that

were originally offered from another external source, and

they did so truly believing, as assessed by confidence

ratings, that their new contribution was a novel item devised

by their own innovation.

In the experiments that follow, we asked groups of

participants to offer ideas in the form of solutions to

common problems (e.g., How can traffic accidents be

reduced?). Later, we asked them to return and to generate

new, novel ideas. Our theoretical motivations were as

follows. The cryptomnesia reported in earlier studies could

largely reflect the concurrent cognitive dem ands of generat-

ing puzzle solutions or words out of semantic mem ory. That

is , given a demanding primary activity like solving a

problem, people may not have enough resources or, more

likely, simply m ay be less inclined to m onitor the source of

the ideas that they are generating. Thus, the four exp eriments

that we report here address whether cryptomnesia in a

generative paradigm is more frequent than when various

task instructions are given to induce people to monitor

source more carefully.

In a related way, we explicitly tested in Experiment 1

whether the plagiarism errors exhibited by g roups of people

naturally engaged in generative idea production accurately

reflect the knowledge they possess as compared with similar

groups engaged in source monitoring for a modified recogni-

tion test. If cryptomnesia arises because of inadequate

application of source-monitoring decision criteria, then the

inadequacy might reside in either the heuristic or the

systematic processing that supports source monitoring. If it

is in the more consciously controlled systematic criteria,

then manipulations of those criteria that improve source

monitoring should reduce cryptomne sia. Therefore, in Experi-

ment 2 we tested whether engaging people in source

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232522788_Creating_False_Memories_Remembering_words_not_presented_in_lists?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20431507_The_eyewitness_suggestibility_effect_and_memory_for_source_Memory_Cognition_17_349-358?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232522788_Creating_False_Memories_Remembering_words_not_presented_in_lists?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20431507_The_eyewitness_suggestibility_effect_and_memory_for_source_Memory_Cognition_17_349-358?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/9901359_Deese_J_On_the_prediction_of_occurrence_of_particular_verbal_intrusions_in_immediate_recall_J_Exp_Psychol_58_17-22?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==


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MARSH, LANDAU, AND HICKS

monitoring during idea generation reduced cryptomnesia

errors. Similarly, if insufficient systematic decision compo-

nents are what contribute to inadvertent plagiarism, then the

rate of cryptomnesia should be able to be manipulated

downward as well as upward. Consequently, in Experiment

3 we used a speeded-response paradigm to determine if

opposing (and limiting) conscious, systematic recollective

processes would negatively affect spontaneous source moni-

toring (thereby resulting in m ore cryptomne sia). Finally, in

Experiment 4 we investigated whether the contextual task

demands surrounding generation would change plagiarism.

That experiment manipulated two variables. First, partici-

pants offered new ideas to an experimenter in a one-on-one

session or anonymously in groups. Second, we specifically

asked half of the participants to avoid plagiarism errors. The

first manipulation of one-on-one interaction w as predicted to

cause participants to apply m ore systematic decision criteria

in a spontaneous fashion to avoid inadvertent plagiarism.

The second manipulation tested whether that spontaneous

application of decision criteria reduced plagiarism to the

same degree as being directly asked to apply more stringent

decision criteria.

Exper iment 1

The purpose of Experiment 1 was to compare the source

attributions made in a modified recognition memory para-

digm to the source attributions made while generating new

ideas.

That comparison was m ade 1 week after participants

had brainstormed solutions to two problems in a group

setting. Although source errors of all kinds have been

reported for the recognition memory test, our focus in this

experiment was on the only observable error that can occur

in new idea generation: an inadvertent plagiarism in which

an old idea is claimed to be one's new contribution. If the

source attributions demanded in a modified recognition

memory test rely on decision criteria supported by substan-

tial controlled processing, then we predicted that plagiarism

errors would be greater in the idea-generation task as

compared w ith the recognition task.

Method

Participants.

One hundred forty-nine undergraduates from the

University of Georgia volunteered and received partial course

credit for their participation. Participants were tested in modestly

sized groups that averaged about 20 participants each. Seventy-four

participants were assigned to a

recognition

condition (group sizes

of 24 ,2 4, and 2 6), and the remaining 75 participants were assigned

to a

generation

condition (group sizes of 18, 18, 19, and 20), as

detailed shortly. Group assignment was determined randomly by a

participant's arrival at the laboratory.

Materials and design. For the generative problem-solving

tasks,

we took two widely used problems from the brainstorming

literature. The two questions w ere (a)

What are some ways in which

the U niversity might be improved?

(Paulus, Dzindolet, Poletes, &

Camacho, 1993) and (b)

How can the number of

traffic

accidents

be reduced? (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991). Although it was unlikely that

participants would forget what question they were working on, the

question was projected clearly on a screen at the front of the room.

People in the recognition condition took a modified recognition

memory test after a week's delay. That test was individually

tailored to each participant to contain new items, items offered by

other group members the week earlier, and items they had offered

themselves, as detailed shortly. The basic design was one between-

subjects variable specifying whether participants were given a

modified recognition test or whether they were asked to generate

additional solutions, each after a we ek's delay.

Procedure.

Each person participated in two experimental ses-

sions that were conducted 1 week apart. Table 1 outlines the

procedure for this experiment and the ones that followed. During

the first session, all participants in each group were instructed that

Table 1

Testing Procedures Used During the First and Second Weeks by Condition

in Experiments 1-4

Experiment

and condition W eek l W eek 2

Experiment 1

Generation

Recognition

Experiment 2

No source

Source

Experiment 3

Control

Speeded

Experiment 4

Group testing

Stringent

Lenient

Individual testing

Stringent

Lenient

IGU5/Q/G)

IG(15/Q/G),FG(2/Q/P)

IG(16/Q/G)

IG(167Q/G)

IG(16/Q/G)

IG(16VQ/G)

IG(16/Q/G)

IG(16/Q/G)

IG(167Q/G)

IGQ6/Q/G)

FG(2/Q/P)

R E Q 3 4 / Q )

FG(4/Q/P),REC(32/Q)

FG(4/Q/P), REC(32/Q)

FG(4/Q/P, no time limit), REC(32 /Q)

FG(4/Q/P, 20 s each), REC(32 /Q)

FG(4/Q/P, on paper), REC(32 /Q)

FG(4/Q/P, on paper), REC(32 /Q)

FG(4/Q/P, tape recorded), REC(3 2/Q)

FG(4/Q/P, tape recorded), REC(32 /Q)

Note-

Numb ers refer

to

the number of ideas in the tasks. IG = initial generation; Q = question; G =

group; FG = final generation; P = person; REC = recognition. Thus, IG(15/Q/G) reads as follows:

During initial generation 15 ideas were generated for each question per group.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200772617_Productivity_Loss_in_Idea-Generating_Groups_Tracking_Down_the_Blocking_Effect?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200772617_Productivity_Loss_in_Idea-Generating_Groups_Tracking_Down_the_Blocking_Effect?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==


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they would b e required to collectively generate 15 novel solutions

for each of two problems. Participants volunteered their solutions

by raising their hands and waiting for the experimenter to call on

them. Because seating had been assigned, a second experimenter

was able to record the idea and its source (i.e., the person who

offered it). Although we adm onished participants not to duplicate

the solutions offered by others, we told them that they could offer

more than one solution per problem. This task was called initial

generation, and it lasted, on average, about 5 min p er problem.

At this juncture, the two experimental conditions diverged. We

dismissed people in the generation condition and asked them to

return a week later to finish the experiment. Because participants in

the recognition condition would perform a recognition memory

task the following week, after initial generation they were required

to write down individually two new solutions to each problem that

neither they nor their fellow participants had offered. This was the

identical task that the generation group would perform the follow-

ing week, and it was called final generation. This final generation

was required of the recognition group for two reasons. First,

because some participants could be social loafers (e.g., Harkins,

Latane, & Williams, 1980; Karau & W illiams, 1993) and not offer

any solutions during initial generation, by asking them to provide

two new solutions we ensured that each person in the recognition

condition would have a recognition memory test the following

week that was comprised of all three possible sources of ideas

(theirs, others, and new). Second, we were interested in whether

differences in cryptomnesia of ideas, which are contextually richer

and more related to one another than the single words used in past

research, would display similar patterns across immediate and

delayed testing. Final generation, which we conducted during the

first session for the recognition grou p and during the second session

for the generation group, was assessed by handing o ut two sheets of

paper w ith a question typed at the top of each page.

1

Participants in the recognition condition took a 3 4-item modified

recognition memory test for each problem that was individually

tailored to each participant. The test consisted of all the solutions

from initial generation (other-generated: approximately

42 % ,

range

40%-44%); their solutions from the final generation task offered

the previous week (self-generated: approximately 8%, range 6 % -

10%);

and an equal number of new, distractor items that were

legitimate solutions but had not been generated earlier in that

participant's group (50%). These lures were collected from ideas

generated previously by pilot groups and by other experimental

groups. The ideas were typed on separate sheets for each problem,

and participants were asked to identify the source of each idea by

marking an S if the solution was generated by someone else, an

M to indicate m in e if they had generated the solution during

either generation task , or an **N if the solution was new.

Results and Discussion

Unless stated otherwise, in this experiment and in those

that follow, statistical significance by chance does not

exceed 5%. No instances of cryptomnesia occurred during

initial generation. Following Marsh and Bower (1993), had

one occurred, it would not have been double counted during

final generation. Of central interest was the proportion of

responses during final generation that were claimed to be

novel solutions, when in fact, some other participant had

offered the same idea earlier. Identifying these inadvertent

plagiarisms was accomplished with little ambiguity. Two

raters, unaware of the aims of the experiment, were provided

with each participant's final generation sheet and a master

list of ideas that had been given during initial generation for

that particip ants group. After independently identifying

redundant ideas, we assessed interrater reliability at .94 ; we

settled disputes in conference with the two raters. The

pattern of results did not change when we excluded or

included the small number of disputed solutions, and we

chose the latter. Table 2 is used to com pare plagiarism in the

final generation task with that elicited on the recognition

tests in all experiments. As can be seen in that table, the

recognition group, for which final generation immediately

followed initial generation, plagiarized fewer of their new

solutions as compared with the generation group that

returned after a week's delay, F(l, 147) =

15.91,

MSE =

.05. Thus, more inadvertent plagiarism occurred following a

delay as opposed to imm ediate testing. This delay effect on

the unintentional plagiarizing of ide as is not entirely surpris-

ing because both Brown and Halliday (1991) and Marsh and

Bower (1993 ) found similar results with words.

2

The results of the recognition group's modified recogni-

tion mem ory test are set forth in Table 3 as the percentage of

correct identifications and source confusions contingent on

an item's true origin (i.e., the columns sum to 100%) pooled

over the two questions. Even after a week's delay, partici-

pants' identification of the origin of ideas was quite good.

Averaging the entries on the diagonal yielded a mean

accuracy of 86.1% for the 68 ideas (new and old) to both

problems. Of the false positives (column 1), more errors

occurred in which a new item was attributed to another

group member rather than to

oneself,

r(73) = 11.51. The

tendency to attribute a false alarm to another person rather

than to oneself has been dubbed the it-had-to-b e-you

effect and has been found consistently with modified recog-

nition memory tasks that have been used to assess source

monitoring (e.g., Johnson et al., 1981; Marsh & Bower,

1993; Marsh & L andau, 1995). Identification of other group

members' solutions (column 2) was also remarkably good

(90.3%).

Of critical interest is the proportion of other-

generated responses that were claimed as one 's own solution

(i.e., inadvertent plagiarism). As shown redundantly in

Tables 2 and 3, the critical percentage is 0.8%. Following

1

The experimental design w as not optimal in the sense that

participants in the recognition group each generated tw o ad ditional

ideas during the first session as compared with the generation

group. This problem wa s corrected in Experiments 2- 4 and did not

seem to have affected the conclusions that can be drawn from this

experiment.

2

Our original motivation for testing large groups of people w as

that we had ho ped to find a difference in plagiarism between tho se

people who generated an idea and the social loafers who did not

(on the basis of a finding of better source monitoring when

comparing active participants to passive observers from an experi-

ment by Johnson and Raye, 1981). We failed somewhat in that

quest because the 31 loafers (even pooled across conditions) did

plagiarize much mo re (19.8% , SEW = 3.6) than the 118 generators

(11.8%, SE M

= 2.3), but this difference failed to reach signifi-

cance,

F(l,

147) = 2.65,

p >

.10,

MSE -

.06. Because we lacked

control over who would generate and who would not, we aban-

doned this examination in Experiments 2-4 in favor of an

experimental design that caused all participants to be generators.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/209410290_Social_Loafing_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_and_Theoretical_Integration?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14698751_Eliciting_Cryptomnesia_Unconscious_Plagiarism_in_a_Puzzle_Task?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232514669_Reality_Monitoring?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232514669_Reality_Monitoring?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14698751_Eliciting_Cryptomnesia_Unconscious_Plagiarism_in_a_Puzzle_Task?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/209410290_Social_Loafing_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_and_Theoretical_Integration?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==


5/12

890


Table 2

Differences in Plagiarism Tested by F Ratios) Between Final Generation and Modified

Recognition for Experiments 1-4

Experiment

and

condition

Experiment 1

Generation

Recognition

Experiment 2

No source

Source

Experiment 3

Control

Speeded

Experiment 4

Group testing

Stringent

Lenient

Individual testing

Stringent

Lenient

Final

generation

M

21.0

(5-7)

21.2

7.8

11.5

24.5

10.2

21.2

6.3

11.0

SE

2.3

(3-D

3.5

1.6

3.0

3.3

2.0

3.6

2.3

2.8

Recognition

M

0.8

7.4

5.1

6.5

5.5

2.0

3.5

3.8

3.5

SE

0.2

1.6

1.0

1.3

1.1

0.8

1.2

1.2

1.1

F

11.6**

1.8

2.2

30.4***

17.6***

21 9***

0.9

6.7*

df

1,25

1,28

1,23

1,24

1,15

1,15

1,15

1,15

MSE

.020

.010

.010

.010

.001

.010

.001

.010

Note.

Recognition data are redundant with the tables reported for Experiments 1-3. The data in

parentheses for Experiment 1 are not directly comparable but are included for completeness.

*p


6/12


7/12

892

MARSH, LANDAU,

AND

HICKS

Table 5

Percentage of Correct Identifications

and

Source

ConfUsions in Recognition Me mory for Experiment 2

for Groups Who

Were

Not Encouraged to Focus

on Source and or Those Who Were

Group

an d

response

No source

N e w

Other

Self

Source

N e w

Other

Self

New

84.9

12.5

2.6

87.0

11.7

1.3

SE

2.2

1.7

0.8

1.6

1.6

0.4

Item origin

Other

9.0

83.6

7.4

10.8

84.1

5.1

SE

1.4

2.1

1.6

1.4

1.4

1.0

Self

1.9

11.0

87.1

2.4

8.2

89.4

SE

0.8

2.8

2.7

1.1

1.6

2.1

Note. Columns for each group sum to 100%.

Tables

2 and 5,

both source

and

no-source groups plagia-

rized about the same number of items when tested by a

recognition memory test, F( l, 53) = 1.44,

p >

.13,

MSE =

.001. We found the same nonsignificant difference between

the groups with the remaining eight cells of each condition

in Table 5, even before a Bonferroni correction for multiple

comparisons. However, as highlighted in Table 2, com paring

the incidence of cryptomnesia in the context of generating

ideas during final generation with the inadvertent plagiarism

elicited under the demands of the recognition test revealed

greater plagiarism during generation for only the no-source

group. When analyzed as a mixed-model analysis of vari-

ance (ANOVA) with task (generation vs. recognition) as a

within-subjects variable

and

group (source vs.

no

source)

as

a between-subjects variable, a significant interaction was

present, F(l, 53) = 6.57, MSE = .01. Participants who

focused on the origin of their new ideas plagiarized other

group members to the same small degree during final

generation and on the recognition test. In contrast, the

no-source group plagiarized far greater numbers of ideas in

the context of generative production than they did when they

were specifically asked to monitor source on the recognition

test. These results suggest that people may not spontane-

ously monitor source to a sufficient degree, or monitor it by

using very different criteria, when engaged in everyday,

generative problem-solving tasks. Similarly, the results

suggest that people do not spontaneously use information

that they possess

to

avoid inadvertent plagiarism.

Exper iment 3

In Experiment 1, the frequency of inadvertently claiming

someone else's idea as one's own was shown to depend on

whether one was asked specifically about source (recogni-

tion) or whether one was required to monitor source in

service of another task (generating truly novel ideas). In

Experiment 2, we replicated that comparison by using a

cleaner experimental design and a specific manipulation that

instructed some participants to consider the origin of their

new ideas. Without those instructions, participants left to

their own devices inadvertently plagiarized many m ore ideas

than did participants given those instructions. Notice that

those instructions acted to change the context in which

participants generated their new ideas, rather than explicitly

directing them to adopt more stringent decision criteria as in

the context

of a

modified recognition test. Although

the

results of that manipulation certainly suggest that people do

not spontaneously monitor source to an adequate degree, it

was not a demonstration that people completely neglect to

monitor source when generating ideas.

We designed Experiment 3 to demonstrate that source

monitoring is critical to a variety of tasks (Johnson et al.,

1993) and that it is based on the theory that source

monitoring is supported by both conscious (systematic) and

unconscious (heuristic) processing. In this next experiment,

we used a manipulation that should increase, rather than

decrease as in Experiment 2, the source-monitoring error of

inadvertent plagiarism. Using the identical paradigm to the

no-source group in Experiment 2 (see Table 1), we required

half

of

the participants

to

give speeded responses during

the

final generation task.

4

We expected this manipulation to

reduce the conscious contributions to source monitoring,

thereby imitating real-world circumstances in which people

are pressured to devise new ideas o r to have their ideas heard

by others. On the one hand, if that amount of source

monitoring that spontaneously occurs under normal circum-

stances involves systematic and conscious decision criteria,

then the speeded condition should show increased cryptom-

nesia relative to a control condition in which people are left

to their normal modes of cognitive processing. On the other

hand, if very little systematic processing naturally occurs

during idea generation, little difference in performance

should be observed between these two conditions. As in

Experiment 2,

we

measured recognition performance subse-

quent to final generation for both groups, and we collected

confidence ratings during final ge neration.

Method

Participants. Forty-nine undergraduates participated in ex-

change for partial course credit. Twenty-five were randomly

assigned to a speeded condition and the remaining 24 to a control

condition, as detailed shortly. Participants were tested in small

groups that ranged from 2 to 4 people. None had participated

previously.

Materials and procedure.

The same brain storming problems

were used. Procedurally, the experiment was identical to the

no-source group

in

Experiment

2

(see Table 1). Grou ps offered

16

solutions to each of two problems and returned the following week

to generate individually

4

additional solutions

for

each problem.

In

each phase, we admonished participants not to copy, repeat, or

otherw ise offer

an

idea that had been generated earlier. Participants

were also required to complete a modified recognition test com-

prised

of

50%

new

items, with

the

remaining items being either

their own or one of the group member's earlier solutions (see

Experiments 1

and 2 for

details). These procedures constituted

the

control group's participation with only one deviation from the

4

We thank Larry Jacoby for suggesting this alternative to a

divided attention task.


8/12

INADEQUATE SOURCE M ONITORING

893

procedure used for the no-source group in Experiment 2. In that

earlier experiment, participants returned in groups to offer their

new ideas on paper and to take their recognition test. In this

experiment, participants returned individually to have us tape-

record their responses. This procedural deviation was necessary

because when participants in the speeded condition returned, we

gave them only 20 s to generate a solution (insufficient time for

their responses to be recorded in writing). We placed a large

mechanical clock in front of them at the beginning of the session

with 0 s showing. The clock was started, and participants were

required to offer a new solution within that 20-s interval. In the

three cases in which no solution had been offered after 20 s, the

experimenter reset the clock and reminded the participant to

respond before the allotted time expired. Resetting the clock

between ideas took the experimenter about t s. In summary,

participants in the control condition had unlimited time to offer

their solutions, and participants in the speeded condition were

allotted 20 s to offer each new idea. Procedural I y, the two

conditions were otherwise identical. All participants made a

judgment of confidence on a 5-point Likert scale that they had

indeed offered a new idea.

Results and D iscussion

As before, no participant plagiarized another group mem -

ber during initial generation. Plagiarisms during final genera-

tion were identified, as before, as redundant ideas given by

other group members during initial generation. Two raters,

unaware of the aims of the experiment, had an interrater

reliability of .89. We settled disputes in conference with the

two raters. As seen in Table 2, on returning after a week's

delay to complete final generation, participants in the

speeded group (who were allotted only 20 s per response)

inadvertently plagiarized more ideas from their fellow

groups members as compared with participants in the

control group who were under no such time pressure. This

difference was reliable, F(l, 47) = 8.38, M SE = .02, and it

suggests that source monitoring critically depends on the

conscious processing that the speeded manipulation presum-

ably reduced. (Later, we discuss why the plagiarism rate in

the control group was low, as compared with the rates

in Experiments 1 and 2.) As in Experiment 2, however,

plagiarism rates were the same across groups number-

ing from 2 to 4 participants, F( 2 , 46) = 1.71, p > .20,

MSE = .03.

We examined the distributions of confidence ratings for

plagiarized responses (given in the final two columns of

Table 4) for each group. People in the control condition were

fairly confident that their inadvertently plagiarized ideas

were new because approximately 47% of their ideas were

given ratings of 4 or 5, and 62% were given a rating of 3 or

above. Time pressure, however, not only reduced people's

accuracy but their confidence as well. Over 40% of their

ne w ideas were rated at the lowest confidence. Evidently,

participants were aw are of the fact that they had little time to

determine if their offering was truly novel, and this fact was

reflected in their confidence ratings. However, the speeded

manipulation did allow some plagiarisms to be offered with

a reasonable degree of confidence, with about 2 3% assigned

a 4 or 5 and approximately 47% offered with a confidence

rating of

3

or greater.

The recognition memory test was administered after

completion of the final generation task in both groups. The

results for the control and speeded conditions, respectively,

are set forth in Table 6. As can be seen in that table,

performance was remarkably similar in both conditions. In

fact, the two conditions did not differ in any of the nine cells

(all

ts <

1.5,

ps >

.15). When the inadvertent plagiarism

committed in this recognition task was compared with that

committed in the generation task (see Table 2), the speeded

group 's performance showed a marked difference consistent

with the previous two experiments. More cryptomnesia

occurred when participants were engaged in generation than

when taking a recognition test. The control group also

committed more inadvertent plagiarism when generating

new ideas as compared with when the demands of the

recognition memory test explicitly focused participants on

source monito ring, but, unexpec tedly, this difference failed

to reach significance. However, the manner in which we

collected new ideas in this experiment may have contributed

to a depressed level of cryptomnesia in the control group.

Unlike previous experiments, participants were seated one-

on-one with the experimenter in front of a tape recorder.

Those demand characteristics may have placed special

emphasis on participants in both groups to perform as best as

they could, thereby causing them to adopt more stringent

decision criteria than they normally otherwise would have.

Two results serve as corroborating evidence. First, the

11.5% plagiarism rate exhibited by the control group in this

experiment was far less than that of the relevant groups in

Experiments 1 and 2, which plagiarized 2 1.0% and 21.2% ,

respectively. Second, we noticed while collecting the data

that people in the control condition took much longer

to

offer

their eight ideas than did participants in the generation

condition of Experiment 1 or the no-source condition of

Experiment 2. If extended source monitoring is time-

consuming (Johnson, Kounios, & Reeder, 1994), then the

control participants who adopted more stringent criteria should

have taken longer man participants in the two previous experi-

ments. Nevertheless, we conducted a fourth experiment to

demonstrate that the context of having to generate items

Table 6

Percentage of Correct Identifications and Source

ConfUsions in Recognition Memory for Experiment 3

for the Control and Speeded Conditions

Group and

response

Control

N e w

Other

Self

Speeded

N e w

Other

Self

New

85.0

13.7

1.3

89.5

9.4

1.1

SE

2.6

2.5

0.5

1.6

1.5

0.3

Item origin

Other

%

9.3

84.2

6.5

9.8

84.7

5.5

SE

1.8

2.1

1.3

1.8

1.8

1.1

Self

%

1.3

9.2

89.5

2 .0

8.0

90.0

SE

0.8

2 .0

2.2

0.9

1.6

2.0

Note. Columns for each group sum to 100% .


9/12

894


face-to-face with the experimenter changes the decision

criteria that people apply when generating new ideas.

5

Exper iment 4

We designed Experiment 4 to examine whether different

contexts at the time of final generation Lead people to change

their decision criteria spontaneously. More specifically, the

purpose was to determine whether people who are seated

one-on-one with an experimenter (as in Experiment 3)

spontaneously use a set of decision criteria that contain more

systematic and controlled source monitoring. Observed

differences between modified item recognition versus the

generation conditions of Experiments 1-3 suggest that they

might. This investigation of context is important in its own

right because the current laboratory m anipulations described

in this article correspond directly to different contexts in

which unconscious plagiarism may be observed outside the

laboratory. A poet penning verse for his or her own musing

may monitor source in a way very different from writing the

last of several verses for a published collection. Likewise, a

musician composing a score for a close friend may have

decision criteria different from when an album is being put

together. And, most interesting, a group of musicians

collectively working on a mutual goal may monitor source

differently from each working independently (cf. Foley,

Ratner, & Passalacqua, 1993). Rather than using a straight-

forward replication of Experiment 3, however, we also

manipulated task instructions in Experiment 4. In one

condition (the lenient criterion g roup), we gave participants

our standard admonition to avoid plagiarism, just as in all

conditions of Experiments 1-3. In another condition (the

stringent criterion group), we gave the standard admonition

to avoid plagiarism, but we also warned that people often

commit plagiarism errors and they should work hard to

avoid such errors. When crossed orthogonally with the

manipulation of context (generating individually with the

experimenter versus generating more anonymously in a

group setting with pencil and paper), four experimental

conditions were produced (see Table 1). On the one hand,

being told to apply stringent decision criteria may not reduce

inadvertent plagiarism any more than being placed in a

context that demands m ore stringent criteria (alone with the

experimenter who may be viewed as scrutinizing those

ideas).

On the other hand, there may be even more system-

atic processing that can be mustered such that even when

working in front of an experimenter, additional instruction to

avoid plagiarism actually does reduce it even more.

Method

Participants and design. Sixty-four students who had not

participated in Experiments 1-3 volunteered in exchange for partial

course credit. Although group size was never found to influence the

rate of plagiarism in the three previous experiments, we held g roup

size constant at 4 people in this experiment. Four groups of 4

participants were assigned to each cell of the 2 (instruction:

stringent or lenient) X 2 (context: individual or group) experimen-

tal design. Thus, 16 people were randomly assigned to each

condition.

Materials and procedure. With only slight modifications regard-

ing task instructions, the materials and procedure w ere identical to

the control group of Experiment 3 (see the summary in Table 1).

During the first week, groups generated 16 solutions to each

problem. On returning the following week, each person was asked

to generate four brand new ideas (for each problem) that had not

been offered the week before. Only the context and the instructions

differed for the groups of participants. We tested half of the

participants in the lenient condition, and we gave our standard

admonition to avoid duplicating someone else's idea given the

week before. We tested the other half of the participants in the

stringent condition, and w e gave the following additional statement

spoken aloud to participants:

When people attempt to generate ideas, often they will

produce an idea that som eone else had provided at an earlier

point in time and not even realize they have accidentally m ade

this error. Please be careful to avoid m aking this mistake w hen

you generate your own new ideas. In other words, you w ant to

avoid generating an idea that was offered last week.

Half of the participants assigned to each of these stringent and

lenient groups returned in groups to offer their new ideas on paper.

The remaining people returned in groups, but we tested them

individually in a face-to-face session to have their responses

recorded on tape. Unlike Experiment 3, however, we placed no

time constraints on idea generation in any of the four experimental

conditions. All participants completed a modified recognition

memory test (identical to that in Experiments 2 and 3 ) at the end of

the second session.

Results and Discussion

We identified plagiarisms in an identical manner as

described in Experiments 1-3. No plagiarism occurred

during initial generation in the first week. During final

generation, however, both the manipulations of context, F ( l,

60) = 6.67,

MSE

= .01 , and task instructions, F (l , 60) =

8.36, MSE = .01 , affected the amount of inadvertent

plagiarism. The results of final generation are set forth in the

last four rows of Table 2. For participants who worked more

anonymously in group settings, stringent task instructions

(10.2%) greatly reduced plagiarism as compared with the

lenient condition (21.2%). For participants who worked

individually in front of the experimenter and spoke their

ideas into a tape recorder, plagiarisms were slightly more

frequent in the lenient condition (11.0%) than under more

stringent task instructions (6.3%). In this second compari-

son, observed plagiarism in the lenient condition replicated

the control condition of Experiment 3 in which 11.5% of

participants' responses were plagiarized. In addition, the

2 1%

plagiarism in the group-testing context that received

the normal admonition instructions replicated Experiments

1-3. Of importance, although the effect size of the stringent

versus lenient manipulation was twice as great in the group

context (11% difference) as compared with the experimenter

context (4.7% difference), there was no reliable interaction

ofthe two manipulations, F(l, 60) = 1.31, p> .25, MS£ =

.01. This pattern of results suggests that more systematic and

5

We thank M arcia Johnson for outlining the importance of

conducting this fourth experiment.


10/12


895

controlled decision criteria can be invoked either by specific

instructions or more spontaneously by placing people in a

demanding situation in which they may feel that their ideas

are being scrutinized.

The critical results of the modified recognition task are

also presented in Table 2. As can be seen in that table, the

incidence of cryptomnesia was greater when participants

were generating ideas as compared with when they took a

modified recognition test. The only group that violated this

general claim was the one in which participants were tested

individually and given stringent instructions to avoid plagia-

rism. Evidently, when testing people under conditions of two

specific manipulations designed to reduce plagiarism du ring

generation, their performance approaches that of actually

taking a source-monitoring test. This null result between the

recognition test and final generation for that group comple-

ments the equivalence during final generation of (a) the

group-testing situation with stringent instructions and (b) the

individual situation with lenient instructions. Each of those

two groups received only one manipulation designed to

reduce plagiarism. Thus, greater systematic criteria were

applied in the context of

a

recognition test than in the context

of generating new ideas. And, on balance, these results

support the conclusion mat more systematic, conscious

decision processes can be either invoked spontaneously

when the situation demands them or invoked explicitly by

task instructions to m onitor source more carefully.

General Discussion

Together, the results of these four experiments demon-

strate differences in source monitoring that depend directly

on contextual demands and, importantly, on its method of

assessment. The results also provide one mechanism and a

theoretical framework for understanding why unconscious

plagiarism might occur. In all four experiments, source

monitoring was generally better when assessed by a modi-

fied recognition memory test than when the assessment of

errors was made in a generative problem-solving task, at

least in terms of cryptomnesia. Many of the previous

investigations of source m onitoring have used accuracy in a

modified recognition m emory paradigm (e.g., Johnson et al.,

1981,

1994; Lindsay, Johnson, & K won, 1991; Raye &

Johnson, 1980). Performance on that task reflects best case

conditions in which a large contribution of conscious and

systematic recollective processes are brought to bear. In the

generation of ideas, and perhaps in many other real-world

situations of interest as well, people's decision criteria may

be quite different (Johnson et al., 1993 ). Most likely, people

fail to apply sufficiently stringent decision criteria to av oid

source-monitoring errors such as the cryptomnesia demon-

strated in Experiment 1. Inadvertent source errors can be

reduced by forcing people to consider the origin of their

ideas (Experiment 2) or by forcing them to apply more

stringent and systematic decision criteria (Experiment 4).

Likewise, the belief that one's ideas might be closely

scrutinized (Experiment 4) resembles situations outside the

laboratory in which the application of more stringent

systematic processing may be more spontaneous. How-

ever, people do spontaneously monitor source to some

degree; otherwise the increase in cryptomnesia would not

have been observed in Experiment 3 when conscious

recollective processing was reduced by speeded responding.

As a package, these four experiments demonstrate that

asking people to make source judgm ents inherently change s

the criteria that people naturally use to make such judg-

ments, especially when those judgments are in service of

another primary task. The different distributions of confi-

dence ratings observed in Experiment 2 support that claim.

For example, Johnson et al. (1994) demonstrated that source

judgm ents require more time to make than old-new recogni-

tion judgments. That finding suggests that old-new judg-

ments require less differentiated input and a different milieu

of decision criteria on which to base those judgments. The

results presented here support the theoretical account of how

people go about source monitoring (Johnson et al., 1993).

People use a different mixture of decision criteria, or perhaps

less stringent criteria, when assessments of source are mad e

for som ething other than a m odified recognition test because

their agenda is different. People left to their own devices in

the current experiments could be making simple old-new

recognition judgments about some of the ideas that come to

mind rather than attempting more detailed ascriptions of

source. The results of these experiments suggest that the

detailed assessments of source may o ccur less frequently (or

less accurately) in everyday cognitive processing as com-

pared with assessments based on modified recognition

memory tests.

Dual process models of recognition m emory (e.g., Jacoby

& D allas, 1981; Mandler, 1980) are similar to the theoretical

account of source monitoring (e.g., Johnson et al., 1993) in

that both involve two components: heuristic and systematic

processes. In recognition, the heuristic process is character-

ized as an automatic assessment along the lines of assessing

fluency or familiarity (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981), whereas

the systematic process is based on recollection or retrieval,

perhaps with an all-or-none outcome. In contrast, source

monitoring requires processing to inspect memories in

greater detail to arrive at a determination of source. Al-

though we have implicitly equated the systematic processes

with conscious cognitive processes and the heuristic pro-

cesses with unconscious cognitive proce sses, this character-

ization denies the mutual influence of both conscious and

unconscious processing in any given task (e.g., Jacoby,

1991).

On balance, however, the experiments reported here

suggest that if source judgm ents are typically made

heuristically; [and] systematic processes are engaged less

often (Johnson et al., 1993, p. 5), then either those heuristic

processes have a large conscious component to them or

systematic processes play a large role in source m onitoring.

In Experiment 3, people under time pressure presumably

had less conscious recollection to oppose ideas that came to

mind and, as a consequence, inadvertently plagiarized more

(cf. Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, & Jasechk o, 1989).

The very fact that reducing the available conscious

processing increased source-monitoring errors suggests a

large conscious and systematic component t o source monitor-

ing. Moreover, to the extent that systematic processes are

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15214714_Time-Course_Studies_of_Reality_Monitoring_and_Recognition?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15214714_Time-Course_Studies_of_Reality_Monitoring_and_Recognition?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-733d53d1-251a-470b-aaaa-7fce273a0f46&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjQ0ODUxNTtBUzoxMDQ3OTEzMTc0MTc5OTFAMTQwMTk5NTYwNjE0MA==


11/12

896 MARSH, LANDAU, AND HICKS

slower and more prone to disruption (and the manipulations

in Experiment 3 demonstrated a disruption of source moni-

toring),

the results suggest a disruption of those systematic

processes. Recently, Ste-Marie and Jacoby (1993) drew a

similar conclusion that recognition may never be spontane-

ous in the sense of being fully divorced from the intention or

the activity in which a person is engaged (p. 787; cf.

Johnson et al., 1993, who drew a similar conclusion about

the effect of task demands). Intuitively, source memory tests

seem to demand greater conscious processing directed at

source monitoring than does a generative problem-solving

task such as the one used in the present experiments. One

goal of these experiments wa s to assess the degree to which

people spontaneously apply systematic, conscious decision

criteria to m onitor source in a generative cognitive task. As

we noted earlier, because source monitoring could be made

both better (Experiments 2 and 4) or worse (Experiment 3),

people do spontaneously monitor source to some degree,

even if the basis of that monitoring is to make a simple

old-new recognition judgment. Clearly, the good perfor-

mance on the recognition memory tests in the present

experiments suggests that cryptomnesia results neither from

people forgetting the source of the ideas that they heard nor

from forgetting the ideas themselves and simply regenerat-

ing them. Rather, inadvertent plagiarism occurs because

people working on creative tasks fail to engage in the

systematic decision processes specified by the source-

monitoring framework (e.g., Johnson et

al.,

1993; cf. Jacoby ,

Kelley, Brown, & Jasechko, 1989; Marsh & Landau, 1995).

Only when people are specifically warned that they will

likely commit plagiarism (Experiment 4) do they con-

sciously take steps to avoid doing so.

Given that source monitoring is not adequately invoked in

a generative problem-solving task, why were ideas gener-

ated earlier plagiarized in the first place? Most likely, as the

problem context is reinstated, ideas come to mind and they

are assessed by means of familiarity or fluency (Jacoby,

Kelley, & Dywan, 1989) or perhaps even by the level of

activation they have retained to the reinstated context

(Marsh & Landau, 1995). Ideas that fluently come to mind

because they have been previously experienced may have a

higher probability of having that fluency be misattributed to

current thinking rather than to past experience. G iven tasks

that do not necessarily demand, or do not allow for (e.g.,

Experiment 3), extended conscious source monitoring, these

ideas may then get offered a s one's novel co ntribution. Such

an error is even m ore probable given that one's current goal

is to generate a new idea. Thus, the experiments reported in

this article are conceptually similar to Jacoby's studies on

promoting false fame judgments of nonfamous names (e.g.,

Jacoby, Kelley, & Dywan, 1989). In those experiments,

people who were exposed to nonfamous names had a higher

probability of calling those old names fam ous after a

1-day delay than did people who made their judgments

shortly after presentation. Presumably, people possess the

ability to invoke conscious processing at immediate testing

but are unable to do so after a delay. With less conscious

processing available, the relatively larger role of uncon-

scious processing goes u nchecked.

To proponents of the source-monitoring framework, the

results of these experiments support that theory and serve to

answer their call for empirical work and manipulations

predicted to affect the systematic rather than the heuristic

contributions to source monitoring that have dominated

earlier inquiry (Johnson et al.,

1993,

p. 10). In Experiment 1,

we demonstrated effects consistent with the different deci-

sion criteria associated with a modified recognition test

versus a generative task. Experiment 2 can be viewed as

explicitly creating a situation in which greater systematic

processing was invoked. Likewise, Experiment 4 explicitly

created two situations in which more stringent decision

criteria were applied, one in which people were instructed to

be cautious and one in which they spontaneously did

so.

And

in Experiment 3 , we demonstrated the failure (or perhaps the

inability) of source monitoring when systematic, or con-

scious, processing is opposed. Thus, these experiments

support predictions made by the source-monitoring frame-

work.

Our goal in assessing the degree to which source monitor-

ing is spontaneously engaged in creative problem-solving

tasks highlights the importance of source monitoring to

everyday cognitive functioning. As Johnson et al. (1993)

described, when source monitoring fails, the results range

from mildly disturbing to characteristic of the most densely

amnesic patients (Hirst, 1982). More severe failures of

source monitoring can even result in a variety of delusions

and confabulations (e.g., Oltmanns & Maher, 1988). Given

the importance of source monitoring to everyday cognition,

the fact that people do not always spontaneously and

adequately invoke these processes to a sufficient degree to

avoid, say, inadvertent plagiarism is of some interest.

Speculating on the consequences may be premature; how-

ever, we began this article with Brewer and Pani's (1983)

classification of memory that is based on single versus

repeated exposures to information. In mat classification,

personal memories derived from single exposure appear to

be associated w ith spontaneous source-monitoring processes

to a greater degree than do generic memories derived from

multiple exposure. As such, we cannot help but wonder: As

we repeat the ideas of our colleagues each day in teaching

our courses and in our casual conversations—o ften without

properly crediting the source—do those failures to engage

source-monitoring processes combined with these repeated

exposures lead to a greater level of inadvertent appropriation

than many of us would ever imagine? Whatever the answer

to that question, these experiments have shown that investi-

gating source monitoring in contexts other than recognition

mem ory may be a theoretically fruitful avenue of inquiry.

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Received October

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Revision received August 26, 1996

Accepted August 26 ,199 6

Documents

Marsh Et Al 1997 Contributions of Inadequate Source Monitoring to Unconscious Plagiarism During Idea Generation