False recollections and the congruence of suggested information

In two experiments, congruence of postevent information was manipulated in order to explore its role in the misinformation effect. Congruence of a detail was empirically defined as its compatibility (or match) with a concrete event. Based on this idea it was predicted that a congruent suggested detail would be more easily accepted than an incongruent one. In Experiments 1 and 2 two factors(congruence and truth value ) were manipulated within-subjects, and a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test was used followed by phenomenological judgements. Furthermore, in the second experiment participants were asked to describe four critical items (two seen and two suggested details)to explore differences and similarities between real and unreal memories. Both experiments clearly showed that the congruence of false information caused a robust misinformation effect, so that congruent information was much more accepted than false incongruent information. Furthermore, congruence increased the descriptive and phenomenological similarities between perceived and suggested memories, thus contributing to the misleading effect.