Are there peer‑reviewed psychological studies that experimentally test confusion-based suggestion techniques and their effects on memory or compliance?
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Executive summary
Yes — a large, peer‑reviewed experimental literature demonstrates that suggestion techniques that create confusion or source‑monitoring failures change people’s memories and sometimes their responses; classic misinformation, source‑misattribution, and false‑memory paradigms provide repeated experimental evidence that confusing internal vs. external sources of information produces robust memory distortions, and interrogation‑focused work links confusion to compliance under certain conditions [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The experimental backbone: misinformation and source‑monitoring studies prove confusion alters memory
Decades of laboratory research show that when participants are exposed to misleading post‑event information or are prompted to imagine events, they sometimes confuse suggested content for genuine perceptual memory — a phenomenon labeled source misattribution or the misinformation effect — and this has been repeatedly demonstrated in multi‑experiment, peer‑reviewed studies [1] [5] [2]. Classic paradigms — the misinformation procedure, source‑monitoring tests, and the DRM word‑list task — all create conditions where internal representations (imagined or suggested items) are confusable with externally witnessed events, and authors report that elaboration of sensory details, retrieval practice, and modality of presentation modulate how readily suggestions become experienced as memories [2] [3] [6].
2. Interrogative suggestibility and compliance: experiments that mimic questioning produce both memory change and acquiescence
A distinct but related experimental literature focuses on interrogative suggestibility — how the form and tone of questions and negative feedback during questioning produce both modified recollection and compliant answers; Gudjonsson’s extensions and recent experimental work probe whether the key mechanism is source confusion (people genuinely believing a suggested answer) or compliance (saying what the interrogator wants) and find evidence for both pathways under different conditions [4]. Experimental manipulations that produce uncertainty about one’s memory (negative feedback, leading questions, repeated suggestion) increase both endorsement of suggested details and acceptance of suggested answers as “true,” and researchers stress that some participants internalize suggestions while others respond out of compliance [4] [7].
3. Children, repetition, and interviewer behavior: experimental evidence shows heightened vulnerability to confusion
Controlled studies with children — randomized exposures to consistent vs. misleading post‑event information and manipulations of interviewer support — systematically demonstrate that children can become confused about the source of information and endorse suggested events as memories, with suggestibility affected by interview style, repetition, and developmental factors; peer‑reviewed meta‑analyses and experiments underscore how interviewer wording and social support moderate these effects [8] [9] [10]. Experimental work also shows that retrieval practices and repeated questioning can either strengthen true memories or increase source confusion depending on task complexity, which has direct bearing on forensic interviewing protocols [7] [11].
4. False‑memory paradigms reveal mechanisms but also boundaries of “confusion” effects
Laboratory paradigms such as the DRM lists and controlled misinformation tasks illuminate cognitive mechanisms (associative activation, sensory imagery, source monitoring) contributing to false memories and confusion, but newer studies note that different false‑memory tasks tap partly distinct processes and that presentation modality, delay, and testing procedures change outcomes — meaning not every suggestion or confusion manipulation will produce equivalent effects across contexts [3] [6]. Reviews comparing false memories with clinical confabulations argue that experimentally induced memory distortions are internally generated but facilitated by suggestion and emotion, stressing both empirical reliability and theoretical nuance [12].
5. Limits, debates, and forensic implications: what the experimental record does not settle
While peer‑reviewed experiments robustly show that confusion‑based suggestion alters memory and sometimes elicits compliant responding, open questions remain about ecological generalizability, individual differences in susceptibility, and the precise boundary between genuine belief change and tactical compliance — issues debated in the literature and emphasized by authors who contrast laboratory suggestibility with real‑world interrogations and alleged recovered memories [5] [12] [4]. The research sources explicitly document mechanisms and moderators, but they also caution that experimental setups vary, and extrapolating to high‑stakes forensic or clinical settings requires careful attention to protocol differences and alternative explanations offered by other researchers [4] [12].