Introduction to Psychology

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

Cognitive process Description Potential threat to accuracy

Misinformation
effect

Errors in memory that occur when new but

incorrect information influences existing

accurate memories

Eyewitnesses who are questioned by the police

may change their memories of what they

observed at the crime scene.

Overconfidence

When we are more certain that our memories

and judgments are accurate than we should be

Eyewitnesses may be very confident that they

have accurately identified a suspect, even

though their memories are incorrect.

Salience

When some stimuli, (e.g., those that are colorful,

moving, or unexpected) grab our attention and

make them more likely to be remembered

We may base our judgments on a single salient

event while we ignore hundreds of other equally

informative events that we do not see.

Representativeness
heuristic

Tendency to make judgments according to how

well the event matches our expectations

After a coin has come up “heads” many times in

a row, we may erroneously think that the next

flip is more likely to be “tails” (the gambler’s

fallacy).

Availability heuristic

Idea that things that come to mind easily are

seen as more common

We may overestimate the crime statistics in our

own area, because these crimes are so easy to

recall.

Cognitive
accessibility

Idea that some memories are more highly

activated than others

We may think that we contributed more to a

project than we really did because it is so easy to

remember our own contributions.

Counterfactual
thinking

When we “replay” events such that they turn out

differently (especially when only minor changes

in the events leading up to them make a

difference)

We may feel particularly bad about events that

might not have occurred if only a small change

had occurred before them.

Source Monitoring: Did It Really Happen?

One potential error in memory involves mistakes in differentiating the sources of
information. Source monitoring refers to the ability to accurately identify the source of a
memory. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of wondering whether you really experienced an
event or only dreamed or imagined it. If so, you wouldn’t be alone. Rassin, Merkelbach, and
Spaan (2001) [1] reported that up to 25% of college students reported being confused about real
versus dreamed events. Studies suggest that people who are fantasy-prone are more likely to
experience source monitoring errors (Winograd, Peluso, & Glover, 1998), [2] and such errors also