memory and gender

Memory and Gender 1

Running head: MEMORY AND GENDER

Memory and Gender

Thomas Cole

University of Minnesota

Memory and Gender 2

Abstract

Eyewitness testimony plays a large role in the criminal justice system, but how reliable is it? A

study of 37 subjects examined whether gender is associated with susceptibility to post event

misinformation. Participants first viewed a short video clip and then read a summary of the

video containing fabricated events about the clip. They were next asked to fill out a short answer

survey about events from the video. The results for this study showed that gender is not a factor

in susceptibility to post event misinformation, as there was no significant difference in the

performance of males versus females in the experiment. These findings bring serious questions

to the reliability of eyewitness testimony in the legal setting.

Memory and Gender 3

Memory and Gender

From the moment an individual receives visual stimuli of an event and at later time

reconstructs the event, that individual is subject to the possibility of storing the memory

incorrectly. As eyewitness testimony plays a significant role in many facets of the criminal

justice system, the interest in measuring the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness testimony is

paramount to professionals across a number of fields. Are some people more capable of

accurately remembering events? If so, what is it about these individuals that set them apart?

Gender has been strongly identified as a factor in the ability to accurately measure events

(Lawton & Hatcher, 2005). Lawton and Hatcher (2006) measured the responses of both men and

women to the concept of visualizing images superimposed on top of one another, otherwise

referred to as visuospatial skills. In the experiment, Lawton & Hatcher (2006) discovered that

men consistently gave more accurate responses to this exercise in visuospatial memory than

women. As such, the ability to process a complex event, such as witnessing a crime, would seem

to be more accurately remembered by males than females.

However, the level of threat perceived from an event has an effect on the ability to

reconstruct the event, according to personality type (Krohne & Hock, 2008). Krohne (2008) has

established two broad personality types as cognitive mechanisms, which mediate reactions to

threatening situations and anxiety. Individuals are either vigilant, meaning they gravitate

towards the threatening aspect of the situation, or they are avoidant, and avert their attention

away from this situation. Participants were asked to view a series of photographs of images of

aversive, ambiguous and nonaversive situations. Aversive situations were defined as violent,

angry, or hostile events, while nonaversive situations were described as neutral descriptions of

every day events, and ambiguous situations were described as having no clear indication of what

Memory and Gender 4

was occurring in the photograph. In this study, the experiment finds that women were not as

adept at remembering nonaversive and aversive images as mean, but were much more accurate at

recalling ambiguous images.

The active attempt to pass false information, or post event misinformation, to an individual

about an event they witnessed shows a marked difference as well (Frost, Sparrow & Barry,

2006). After viewing the movie Clue and taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, individuals

were instructed to answer a series of questions about the movie, with the explicit instruction that

if they did not know an answer, to offer their best guess. Several questions on events which did

not occur in the film were asked by interviewers in addition to events which did occur. When an

individual presented resistance to answering a question, the interviewer repeated the instructions

to offer their best guess. The study identified a positive correlation between rates of extroversion

and the willingness to provide false information about events after encouragement. Frost,

Sparrow and Barry (2006) theorized that individuals with higher rates of extroversion were more

willing to provide false information about events after encouragement due to the degree of

extroversion; extroverts tend to be more attentive to social cues and confirmatory feedback, and

have a stronger concern for their self-image.

Gender has been shown to have a wide range of affect on several different cognitive

processes. The ability to reconstruct an event accurately, of a situation which could range from

non-aversive, such as a short documentary on monkeys, to highly aversive, such as a murder,

should indeed be affected by gender. It is hypothesized that male individuals will be able to give

the most accurate reconstruction of events from memory.

Memory and Gender 5

Method

Participants

There were 40 participants in the study from two sections of a Research Methods class at

the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus. 3 participants were dropped from the data set.

One participant indicated that the video used in the study was one he viewed frequently, and the

other 2 participants did not follow the instructions. Data from 18 men and 19 women remained

with a total sample size of 37. Seventy-four percent of the participants were between the ages of

18 and 22. Participation in the study was voluntary, with no compensation offered.

Materials

A three minute and thirteen second video clip (http://www.youtube.com) from a

documentary on Animal Planet was shown to the participants with the volume muted. A self-

report questionnaire (See Appendix A) was created to assess the participants’ memory of events

from the video clip. The beginning of the questionnaire included a summary of the video. The

summary included several details from the video which were incorrect. Questions about

demographic information included the participants’ sex and age. The twelve items in the

questionnaire measured how accurately the participants were able to recall specific details from

the clip. The format for these questions was open-ended to multiple choice; participants were

asked to answer twelve questions. Each question addressed a specific visual detail from the

video clip, such as the color of a man’s shirt, the brand of a soft drink, or the shape of objects

manipulated by the monkeys in the video.

Procedure

Students enrolled in two sections Research Methods classes volunteered to participate in

this survey as a group activity. Each survey session consisted of twenty participants. All of the

Memory and Gender 6

participants sat in a class room equipped with a projector, internet access, laptop port and

projection screen. The tables in the room were fifteen feet long, seating five students per table

with approximately three feet of space per student. Informed consent was obtained from the

group of participants by announcing that the option to participate was voluntary, and if a

participant should change their mind about participation, they would be allowed to withdraw

their questionnaire. The students were informed they were participating in a study to examine

the ability of participants to recall information from video clips.

The participants were instructed to pay close attention to the video clip, and that they

would be required to answer questions about the contents of the video after viewing it. The

participants were not informed that a summary would be included with the questionnaire. After

the video completed, the participants were handed a summary of the events in the video. The

participants were given five minutes to review the summary. The summaries were then

collected, and each participant was handed a questionnaire. The participants were informed that

their responses were confidential and would be kept anonymous. After completion, the

participants were instructed to fold their survey in half, and deposit it in a collection box on next

to the podium in the front of the class. Once all participants had completed the questionnaire, the

group was debriefed on the method of the survey, and thanked for their participation.

Results

An answer sheet with the correct answers was compiled before administering the test, due

to the test consisting of open-ended questions. To prevent experimenter bias, the participants’

answers were only marked as correct if the answer given perfectly matched the answer on the

answer sheet. A mean value was computed for each participant, as well as a mean value for each

Memory and Gender 7

group, males and females. An independent samples t-test was performed on these data to

determine if gender had an effect on the recall of events after being subjected to post event

misinformation. Review of the data analysis revealed that the female group (M = 4.57, SD =

2.85) and the male group (M = 4.9, SD = 2.76) had no significant difference in the recall ability

after exposure to post event misinformation (t(34) = -0.0306, p = .761), as viewed in Figure 1.

Discussion

The hypothesis that that male individuals would be the most accurate on the

reconstruction of an event from memory was shown to be inconclusive by this research. This

research is in opposition to the research performed by Lawton & Hatcher (2006), which

indicated that men were more able to accurately reconstruct visual images from memory than

women; therefore it cannot be assumed that men are more resistant to post event misinformation

than women. Differences between this study, and the study performed by Lawton & Hatcher

(2006), could have been affected by a number of environmental influences. Lawton & Hatcher

(2006) performed their research in a controlled laboratory setting; this research was performed in

a less controlled class room environment, as well as the method in which the test was delivered.

In Lawton & Hatcher (2006), participants were tested individually, whereas in this study,

participants were tested in a large group.

Our research was performed with very limited resources. Due to time constraints, several

different facets of each researcher’s individual study were dropped in favor of being able to

collect some information which could be used by each researcher in their study. The information

on Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, which was originally intended to be listed on the

survey as a self-report, was not collected in this experiment. A number of environmental

Memory and Gender 8

situations may have also affected the results of this study. The participants in this study all

viewed the low-resolution video at a different distance, which may have affected the ability to

form an accurate memory of the events in the video due to eyesight limitations. The participants

were instructed to not communicate with each other during the viewing of the video, and

subsequent answering of the questionnaire, but each of the test proctors noted that several

individuals in each section ignored this instruction. It is possible that the communication during

the viewing of the video may have distorted the participants’ memory of the events.

The study would definitely be enriched by obtaining information from a demographic

broader than undergraduate psychology students. Future improvements to this research should

include a wider demographic selection, and more importantly, the presentation of at least one

additional gender neutral video and accompanying questionnaire. As previously noted,

performing this research in a controlled laboratory setting, with a focus on individual testing,

would most likely yield more accurate results. An approach which would also greatly enrich this

study would be to gather additional information from the participants in the form of the Myers-

Briggs Type Indicator Personality test.

Personality has been identified as a possible factor in the ability to accurately measure

events (Frost, Sparrow & Barry, 2006; Ward & Loftus, 1985). Ward and Loftus (1985) found

that individuals who scored as introverted on the introversion-extroversion scale of the Myers-

Briggs Type Indicator were more susceptible to passive false post-event, information clouding

their ability to reconstruct the event from memory, than those who scored as extroverted on the

same scale (Ward & Loftus, 1985). Likewise, a much smaller, but still significant, trend of

allowing passive false post-event information to interfere with an individual’s ability to

reconstruct an event was also noticed for those who scored as intuitive on the intuition-sensation

Memory and Gender 9

scale, than those who scored sensate on the same scale. As a conclusion, individuals who were

both introverted and intuitive showed a higher susceptibility than any other combination of

personality traits (Ward & Loftus, 1985).

Personality type also was found to influence exactly how individuals organize and arrange

memories (Ferguson & Fletcher, 1987). In their experiment, individuals were administered the

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and several cognitive instruments to measure a variety of tasks

such as verbal ability and selection recall. The results of the experiment were as expected, in

that individuals who scored high in certain areas of the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator also scored

well on cognitive tests associated with that aspect of personality. The purpose of the study was

to measure the reliability of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in relation to several other

cognitive measures, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the personal construct grid,

and the verbal component of the AH2 (Ferguson & Fletcher, 1987). In an example of the

research results, individuals who scored high in thinking, on the thinking-feeling scale, were

shown to have a greater capacity at dealing with facts and figures, as measured by mental control

scale of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test, than individuals who scored highly in feeling on

the same scale (Ferguson & Fletcher, 1987).

This study yielded inconclusive results for the hypothesis and there is ample room for

future research in this area. Research into the area of post event misinformation is quite

formidable (Ward & Loftus, 1985; Khorne & Hock, 2007; Frost, Sparrow & Barry 2006), as

eyewitness testimony plays an important, if overvalued, role within the criminal justice system.

Research of this nature can be utilized by a broad number of professionals within the criminal

justice system as a means of improving the accuracy of prosecution, as well as enabling a more

financially efficient and socially just system. The possibility for a bias in favor of male eye-

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witness testimony over that offered by females is very real, as there is a cultural bias towards

men in American society. This research should help dispel that myth, as well as assist in the

prevention of wrongful imprisonment.


References

Ferguson, J., & Fletcher, C. (1987). Personality type and cognitive style. Psychological Reports.

60, 959-964.

Frost, P., Sparrow, S., Barry, J., & (2006). Personality characteristics associated with

susceptibility to false memories. American Journal of Psychology, 119, 193-204.

Khrone, H. W., & Hock, M. (2008). Cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender as

predictors of the processing of aversive information. Journal of Research in Personality.

42, 1572-1584.

Lawton, C. A., & Hatcher, D. W. (2005). Gender differences in integration of images in

visuospatial memory. Sex Roles. 53, 717-725.

Myers-Briggs Foundation (1997). Electronic references. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

Ward, R. A., & Loftis, E. F. (1985). Eyewitness performance in different psychological types.

Journal of General Psychology. 112, 191-200.


Appendix A

Animal planet shot this video in 2005 on an island in the Caribbean. Animal planet always has its blue trademark in the lower left portion of the screen. In the video the man wearing a red T shirt is playing the steel drum. The man with the red T-shirt imported all of the white faced monkeys to this island. The man did not know that the white faced monkeys loved to drink alcohol. The white faced monkeys are always stealing alcoholic drinks from the people on the island. On occasion the white faced monkeys steal Dr. Pepper, their favorite non-alcoholic drink. In the video the monkeys love to play on brown mahogany chairs after they get drunk. For some odd reason the monkeys only play on the brown square picnic tables and the white faced monkeys seem to be attracted to everything brown. -----------------------------------------------------Detach Here---------------------------------------------------------- Please circle or check your gender: MALE FEMALE Short Answer – Please give a one to three word answer 2. What was the color of the man’s shirt playing the steel drum? ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. What color is the monkey’s fur around their face? ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. What are the monkeys playing on at the end of the video? ___________________________________________________________________________ 5. What is the color of the object that they are playing on at the end of the video? ___________________________________________________________________________ 6. What is the most abundant color of the Animal Planet logo? ___________________________________________________________________________ 7. What is the shape of the table that the monkeys knock over? ___________________________________________________________________________ 8. What kind of soda does the monkey steal? ___________________________________________________________________________ 9. What year was the video filmed? ___________________________________________________________________________ 10. What is the color of the animal planet trademark? ___________________________________________________________________________ 11. What was the location of the animal planet trademark? ___________________________________________________________________________ 12. What kind of non-alcoholic drink do the monkeys steal? ___________________________________________________________________________


Figure Caption Figure 1. Mean correct answers for males and females. The error bars represent standard

deviations.


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memory and gender

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