- Research on the way people processed media reports about
the Iraq war tells us more about how we create our beliefs and memories.
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- Psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of the University
of Western Australia and team report their study of more than 800 people
from Australia, the US and Germany, in the March issue of the journal Psychological
Science.
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- Lewandowsky says the study, which was conducted in 2003
during the closing phases of the war and soon afterwards, was triggered
by the number of retractions that occurred in the media at the time.
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- "It struck us as remarkable how many things were
reported and then subsequently corrected," he says.
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- The first part of their study looked at how people processed
corrections that occurred in the early days of the war.
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- The researchers asked whether people believed statements
based on two kinds of press reports: one type that had been retracted and
one that continued to be reported as fact.
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- The four statements based on reports that participants
knew had been retracted were:
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- ï The allies captured an Iraqi general during the
first one to two weeks of the war
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- ï Allied POWs (Prisoners of War) were executed by
the Iraqis after being captured and/or surrendering
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- ï Toward the end of the first week of the war, there
was a significant civilian uprising against the Iraqi Baath Party militia
in Basra, and
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- ï During the first few days of the war, an entire
Iraqi division (some 8000 soldiers) was captured and/or surrendered to
the allies.
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- "We tried to be as balanced as possible whether
it put the Iraqis in a bad light, or the Coalition forces, to the extent
that that was possible," Lewandowsky says.
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- Sceptics and non-sceptics
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- The researchers also classified people as sceptical if
they disagreed with the official reason given for war, ridding Iraq of
weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
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- The results showed there were far fewer sceptics in the
US than in Germany and Australia. And that such sceptics were less likely
to believe statements that they knew had been retracted than those people
classified as non-sceptical.
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- "The main finding about suspicion is confirming
what we have known for quite a while from laboratory studies," says
Lewandowsky.
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- "People do not discount corrected information unless
they are suspicious about it or unless they are given some other hypothesis
with which to interpret the information."
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- He says this has important implications in the judicial
system where judges often instruct juries to disregard certain information.
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- "It turns out that jurors don't disregard information
even if they are directed to do so unless they are being made suspicious
about why the information was actually used in the first place. So, exactly
what we found."
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- False memories
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- The study also supports certain theories about the formation
of false memories, says Lewandowsky.
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- "The constant hinting at WMDs was sufficient to
make some people believe that they have been found," he says.
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- Lewandowsky says the study confirmed previous findings
that around 30% of US respondents say weapons of mass destruction have
been found in Iraq since the war started.
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- By contrast, he says, only 17% of Australians and only
5% of Germans believe this was the case.
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- "Given that that is in fact not true, given that
none has ever been discovered, we would classify those responses as a false
memory," says Lewandowsky.
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- He can't explain why this is the case but thinks that
scepticism may also play a role.
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- "Overall, our scientific understanding of human
memory reveals it as a device that is prone to considerable error and distortion,"
says Lewandowsky, referring to other research on the ability of victims
to remember perpetrators of a crime.
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- "Even when they are not being actively manipulated,
there is consistent evidence that people often mistakenly identify 'perpetrators'
from a line-up of entirely innocent people."
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- ©2005 ABC
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- http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1316359.htm
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