How does the emotionality of the witnessed event affect the source monitoring ability?

Abstract

This study investigated if emotionality affects the occurrence of source misattribution, which seems to be the most valid mechanism of misinformation effect. A half of 120 participants saw an emotionally stressful videotaped movie, and the other half a neutral one. Then, they answered the questionnaire, which included misinformation about the details of the movie. After 15 minutes or 2 days, they answered the source monitoring test, which required them to select the source of the memory of details that had been presented in the movie and/or in the questionnaire, or not either of them. Several patterns of differences in test performance appeared between the emotional condition and the neutral condition. These differences suggest that the ability for source monitoring declined more saliently with time in the emotional condition than in the neutral condition, and that memories about visually central details are less vulnerable to misinformation effect with 15 minutes delay in the emotional condition than in the neutral condition.