 Are false memories more likely to develop when people are motivated to believe in the false event?  Sharman and Calacouris (2010) found that following an imagination exercise, subjects with high levels of motivation for achievement rated their confidence for false achievement events higher than those with low levels of motivation.  We tested the same process using suggestion alone (without the imagination exercise).  But Sharman's study (and other past research) was correlational, so to find a causal link we also induced motivation using an experimental manipulation.  The present study investigated the following hypotheses:  (1) Do those with high achievement motivation have more false memory following suggestion than those with low motivation (for achievement-related unlikely events)  (2) Can induced motivation lead to higher confidence and/or clearer memory of false achievement childhood events? Method Motivated False Memory Hoang D. D. Nguyen, Lawrence Patihis, Thomas Doan, Ian W. Tingen, and Elizabeth F. Loftus Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine Introduction Results Checking the False Suggestion Effect  Subjects increased their confidence and memory scores for the false events suggested in their profiles (ps <.001). The mean increases were 3.54 and 2.98 for confidence and memory, respectively, on the 8-point scale.. Checking the Motivation Induction Manipulation  Those in the Increase Motivation condition scored higher on postest achievement motivation than those in the Decrease Motivation condition, t(156) = 2.37, p =.019. Testing Hypotheses (1) The median split analysis shown in Figure 1 found no significant difference between those with low baseline motivation and those with high. In addition, baseline motivation and the increase in memory/confidence for the false event were not found to be significantly associated in regression analyses. (1)Figure 2 shows that although subjects in the increasing motivation group reported had higher confidence that the false event happened, this difference was not significant. Participants  158 undergraduates participated for course credit. 87% female. Suggestion to induce false memory  Session 1: Subjects rated their confidence of and memory for childhood events in the Life Event Inventory (pretest).  Session 2: One week later, subjects were told that a sophisticated computer software had taken last weeks’ personality measures and predicted that they likely had experienced some childhood events. One of the suggested events was an unlikely achievement-related event. For example some participants received the suggestion that they very likely “invented a useful device.”  They were asked to rate their confidence and memory in the LEI the second time (posttest). Manipulation to induce motivation  Subjects were randomly assigned into 2 groups who received this vignette: “Recent longitudinal research conducted at Princeton University has shown that people with high motivation to achieve in college go on to have happier (unhappier) lives after college. High achievers tend to experience less (more) loneliness and social exclusion, and tend to have better (worse) romantic relationships (Korgan, Nielson, & Brown, 2011).” Increase Motivation condition : received the bolded words. Decrease Motivation condition: received the (italicized) words instead.  Motivation and false memory were not significantly related, unlike Sharman and Calacouris’ (2010). This could be due to the procedural difference between the current study (suggestion) and the Sharman study (imagination exercise), or a lack of power..  We did not find evidence that induced motivation would increase false belief/memory even though the patterns were in the expected direction. One possibility is that our manipulation was not enough to induce enough change in motivation between two groups.  In an exploratory analysis, we found a marginally significant relationship between motivation and false confidence among a subgroup of subjects, those whose motive scores were higher than average and were induced to increase motivation. This tentatively suggests that the association between achievement motivation and false memory for achievement related events may exist in subjects with higher than average motivation for achievement. References Sharman, S. J., & Calacouris, S. (2010). Do people’s motives influence their susceptibility to imagination inflation? Experimental Psychology, 57, Further Reading Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107, Singer, J. A. (1990). Affective responses to autobiographical memories and their relationship to long-term goals. Journal of Personality, 58, Scoboria, A., Mazzoni, G., Kirsch, I. and Relyea, M. (2004). Plausibility and belief in autobiographical memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 791– 807. Acknowledgements. This research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at University of California, Irvine. Thanks also Dr. JoAnn Prause and Dr. Joanne Zinger for their help in statistical analyses and research design. Discussion Figure 2. Effect of inducing motivation on self-reported confidence for an unlikely achievement event. Subjects in the Increase Motivation group increased their confidence for the false events a mean of 3.71 units, while those in the Decrease Motivation group increased a mean of 3.40 units. The difference was not statistically significant, t(156) =.67, ns. Error bars represent standard errors. Figure 1. Increase in memory for false events among subjects with high and low baseline achievement motivation. Subjects whose motive scores were above the median (8) were in the High Motivation group, while those with scores below the median were in the Low Motivation group. Subjects with high motivation increased their memory scores for false events a mean of 3.26 units, while subjects in the other group increased a mean of 2.92 units. However, this difference was not significant, t(131) = -.68, ns.