Increasing belief in the experience of an invasive procedure that never happened: the role of plausibility and schematicity

Numerous studies have increased people's confidence in the occurrence of various childhood events, however, Pezdek, Finger, and Hodge (1997) were able to successfully increase participants' confidence in one event (e.g., being lost in a mall), but not another (e.g., having received an enema). Two experiments considered two factors, plausibility and schematicity, as explanations for this differential suggestibility. In Experiment 1, participants completed a questionnaire regarding the likelihood of experiencing various childhood events, including receiving an enema. Two weeks later, they were given schematic or plausibility information about enemas, or both, or neither. Finally, participants again completed the previous questionnaire regarding childhood experiences. Only plausibility increased participants' beliefs that they had experienced an enema during childhood. In Experiment 2, participants were additionally asked about whether they had a memory of the event. While participants still responded with greater confidence that they had experienced an enema when given plausibility information, it did not increase their memory for the event, and schematicity actually decreased reported memory for the experience. The potential implications of these findings for the formation of false memories of sexual abuse are considered. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.