Individual Differences in the Formation of False Memories: Is Suggestibility a Predictive Factor?

Individual differences in the formation of false memories using suggestibility as a predictive factor were investigated. Undergraduate males and females were administered two false memory paradigms: the Deese-Roedinger-McDermott (DRM) (1995) word recognition task and the Kassin & Kiechel (KK) ALT key task (1996). Subsequently, participants were administered the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS) 2 to determine their suggestibility scores. As predicted, higher suggestibility scores were correlated with forming a false memory in the Kassin & Kiechel task. However, suggestibility was not correlated with the DRM task. These results provide evidence that suggestibility is a predictive factor for one false memory paradigm but not the other, indicating that perhaps different cognitive mechanisms underlie the two.