1. Employee at Blockbuster’s was stacking shelves at the beginning (they were actually by the till)
2. The main robber gave the bag of stolen money to his accomplice before they left the store (this never actually happened)
3. The main robber wore a leather jacket (they were wearing a cloth jacket with stripes)
4. The main robber’s accomplice was carrying a gun (they had nothing in their hands at all)


University of California, Davis

- n = 210 
- 108 undergraduate students from the University of Aberdeen (17-33 years)
- 102 older adults recruited from local community (58-80 years)

Older adults were first given a Memory Impairment Screen to test for the possibility of Alzheimer’s.


Event: a simulated robbery at a Blockbuster (2 robbers, 1 employee, 1 customer) 
Recall Measures: 20 question questionnaire given to each participant before and after manipulation phase

Biased-confederate group: participants completed the experiment with a confederate whom they believed to be another participant (confederates trained to act as naive participant) 

Participants watched a short video followed by 10 minutes of filler tasks
Participants were given 20 question questionnaire (asked not to guess on questions) followed by 20 minutes of filler tasks 
Manipulation phase: instructed that they had a short amount of time to discuss the video events together as a pair - confederate was trained to disclose 4 items of misinformation

Biased-narrative group: same procedure as biased-confederate group but instead of discussion with a confederate during the manipulation phase, participants were asked to read a written story embedded with 4 items of misinformation


Say it to my face: Study Method

Gabbert, F., Memon, A., Allan, K., & Wright, D.B. (2004/2010). Say it to my face: Examining the effects of socially encountered misinformation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 9(2), 215–227. https://doi.org/10.1348/1355325041719428

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