Seeing photos makes us read between the lines: The influence of photos on memory for inferences

Abstract

Three studies examined how photos accompanying stories could contribute to people drawing inferences about outcomes from the stories and subsequently claiming that they had read what had actually only been inferred. Subjects read short stories designed to induce inferences about their conclusions (e.g., "Sabrina dropped the delicate vase" invites the inference that the vase broke) accompanied by a photo depicting the likely conclusion (the broken vase), a photo depicting a detail of the story but not the conclusion (the vase before it was dropped), or no photo. Results showed that seeing photographs consistent with inferred conclusions led people to falsely claim that they read those conclusions. Photo-boosted inferences were held with high confidence and were robust over time. Falsely recalled inferences were sometimes accompanied by false claims to have seen a photo depicting the inferred events when another photo or no photo had actually be seen. These findings support the source monitoring framework's prediction that people can mistakenly attribute their internally generated inferences about what occurred to externally derived sources when they have photographic "evidence" consistent with the inferred conclusions.

The role of kinematic mental simulation in creating false memories

“…As far as we know, false memories for future events have been formerly investigated only from verbal material (Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973) and for verbal material accompanied by photos (Henkel, 2012). We explored forward false memories for actions portrayed in photos, but our assumptions hold also for a kinematic mental model constructed from verbal material.…”

“…Ours is the first attempt to show that false memories for actions from purely visual scenes can be obtained for future events (e.g., effects stemming from a cause), and not just for causes or missing middle pieces of actions, as previously shown. Previous work showing false memories for future events used verbal material (Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973) also accompanied by photos (Henkel, 2012). In our case only visual material (still frames of actions) is presented.…”

Changing beliefs about past public events with believable and unbelievable doctored photographs

“…Indeed, media speculation about the possibility of protests preceded both the Olympic torch relay and the Royal Wedding-although both events in reality occurred with minimal disruption (Gibson & Walker, 2012;Malik, 2011)-and subjects might have even imagined these hypothetical protests at the time of the media coverage. We know that photos can lead people to elaborate on the information they receive, and to then believe they actually saw or heard those elaborated details (e.g., Garry, Strange, Bernstein, & Kinzett, 2007;Henkel, 2012). Therefore, the images of unrest in the convincing and unconvincing doctored photos could have encouraged subjects to retrieve relevant mental imagery, which they might in turn have misattributed to their recollections of the target events via a feature importation mechanism (Henkel & Carbuto, 2008;Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993;Lyle & Johnson, 2006).…”

Picturing pain and suffering: Effects of demonstrative evidence, instructions, and plaintiff credibility on mock jurors' damage awards

“…This applies with special force to images that seem to be photographic. People tend to accept photos as veridical recordings of what happened; the very existence of the photo appears to prove that the event occurred as depicted (Henkel, 2012). Photos lacking probative value, as well as those possessing it, have been shown to similarly increase the perceived truth of the statements those photos illustrate (Newman et al, 2012).…”