Dishonesty in Public Reports of Confidence: Metacognitive Monitoring of Memory Conformity

Although memory is constantly monitored and controlled by the metacognitive system, little is known about how people monitor memory conformity, incorporating information in others' memories into one's memory of a specific event. In this study, we tested participants' memory for a seemingly shared event and asked them to report their confidence in their answers both individually and jointly. We also explored the relationships between specific individual characteristics, memory, and confidence variables. We have two critical findings apart from replicating the well-evidenced memory conformity effect. First, participants were privately more confident in memory decisions when they did not conform to their cowitness than when they conformed. Conversely, they were publicly more confident in decisions when they conformed than when they did not conform. Second, participants were publicly more confident when they conformed to an incorrect than a correct answer, social outsourcing the information when uncertain. These results indicate that the metacognitive system successfully monitors the social influences on memory, tracks the reliability of information presented by another, and refers to it in context-specific ways (i.e., public vs. private). General Audience Summary The memory conformity effect occurs when two people discuss an event together and incorporate the details in each other's memory reports into their own. Investigation of the memory conformity effect is essential because people naturally share their memories with others, and most of the time, they are convinced of the accuracy of their memory reports. The effect is also among the possible reasons for unreliable testimony, resulting in erroneous verdicts. This study investigated whether individuals can metacognitively monitor social influences on their memory reports. With this aim, participants were asked to watch a film together, believing that they saw the same film in this study. Then, they were asked to discuss some details from the films answering specific questions with alternative answers, which included the same or different information from the films watched by the participants. Confidence judgments were made individually or jointly by the participants after each answer. After the discussion phase, participants answered some previously asked questions and new ones about the film in the recognition phase and again evaluated their confidence in their answers. It was found that even though peopl