Li Yan, Liu Zhiwei, Liu Xiping
Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
School of Education and Psychology, Sichuan University of Science & Engineering, Zigong, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 22;13:822788. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.822788. eCollection 2022.
Previous studies have demonstrated that lying can undermine memory and that its memory-undermining effects could be modulated by the cognitive resources required to tell lies. We extended the investigation of the memory-undermining effect by using a daily life setting in which participants were highly involved in a mock shopping task. Participants were randomly assigned to truth-telling, denying or mixed lying conditions. After finishing the shopping task, participants were told that two people wanted to know about their shopping lists and would ask them some questions in an interview. During the interview, participants were asked whether each of ten items were on the shopping list, five of which were randomly selected from the shopping list, while the other five were not sold in the store. In answering the interview questions, the truth-telling group was asked to respond honestly, the denying group was asked to give denial responses, and the mixed lying group was asked to respond deceptively. Thus, the denying group told five lies and the mixed lying group told ten lies in the interview. The item memory test, source memory test and destination memory test were given in an orderly manner 48 h after the interview. We found that the mixed lying group, rather than the denying group, forgot the lies they told in the interview and mistakenly believed they had lied about something that they had not lied about. Moreover, the mixed lying group retained fewer memories about the person they responded to than the honest group. In addition, participants in the mixed lying group had more non-believed memories than those in the truth-telling group in both item and source memory tests. We conclude that more lies could result in more memory disruptions in daily life.
先前的研究表明，说谎会损害记忆，且其损害记忆的效果可能会受到说谎所需认知资源的调节。我们通过使用一种日常生活场景扩展了对记忆损害效应的研究，在该场景中参与者高度投入到一项模拟购物任务中。参与者被随机分配到说实话、否认或混合说谎条件组。完成购物任务后，参与者被告知有两个人想了解他们的购物清单，并会在访谈中问他们一些问题。在访谈过程中，参与者被问及购物清单上的十项物品中每一项是否在清单上，其中五项是从购物清单中随机挑选的，而另外五项在商店里没有售卖。在回答访谈问题时，说实话组被要求诚实地回答，否认组被要求给出否认回答，混合说谎组被要求进行欺骗性回答。因此，否认组在访谈中说了五个谎，混合说谎组说了十个谎。在访谈48小时后，依次进行了物品记忆测试、源记忆测试和目标记忆测试。我们发现，混合说谎组而非否认组忘记了他们在访谈中所说的谎，并错误地认为他们对自己没有说谎的事情说了谎。此外，混合说谎组对与之交流的人的记忆比诚实组更少。另外，在物品和源记忆测试中，混合说谎组的参与者比说实话组有更多不被相信的记忆。我们得出结论，在日常生活中，更多的谎言可能会导致更多的记忆干扰。
