Ecker et al investigated the impact of different levels of emotional media material and how that can affect memory and the continued influence of misinformation. It is claimed by many researchers such as Levine and Pizarro that ‘emotional information leads to a better memory’, for example source monitoring, which is high when retrieving an emotional stimuli. Nonetheless, other research suggests that emotional material may be more vulnerable to false memories than neutral material in some cases and thus result to ‘flashbulb-like memories for events that were never witnessed’.
The aim of the study was to test the ‘continued influence of misinformation’ through the use of different levels of emotional stimuli’s this is by testing participants
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The researcher used ‘two design variables’ of the two levels of emotionality. Some conditions included no-retraction, retraction and casual- alternatives e.g. a faulty fuel tank was to blame instead of a bad weather. This was incorporated in the experiment to compare the two results and to test the hypothesis more effectively through the use of misinformation. The results showed, although there were many different conditions there was no real effect on memory and the influence of misinformation regarding the levels of emotionality, this is due to ‘the planned contrast between low and high emotionality being non significant, F < …show more content…
There were some changes in the scenarios such as the plane had emergency landing instead of just exploding in the sky after a terrorist attack. Again the results were similar to the other experiments, where the emotionality of the scenarios had no major effect on memory nr the continued influence of misinformation although the self report survey did see an influence on the level of emotionality in the