1. Religious Beliefs Influence Recall of Fabricated Religious Events
Ellen Searle, Brock Brothers, and Jennifer Vonk
Introduction
False memory was demonstrated by Loftus & Palmer
(1974) as a phenomenon in which memory is
malleable and can be biased by wording and prior
expectations. Frenda et. al (2013) demonstrated that
false memory of political events occurred in
conjunction with one’s political attitudes. To
determine if similar effects occurred with events
portraying religion, Searle, Vonk, and Brothers
(unpublished data) investigated false memory in an
undergraduate sample. Religious participants falsely
remembered events consistent with their religious
beliefs and their feelings about the events. That is,
religious participants falsely remembered events
positively depicting religion if they felt positively
about those events and events negatively depicting
atheism if they felt negatively about those events.
However, due to the limitation of a primarily
Christian undergraduate sample, we conducted two
additional studies using community samples.
Conclusions
Religious individuals report higher levels of false
memories for both religious and atheist events
compared to non-religious individuals.
Religious individuals are more likely to falsely
remember events that they feel positively toward.
Non-religious individuals are less likely to falsely
remember events that they feel positively toward
unless the events positively depict Atheism.
Study 2
306 adults were recruited for the study on
Amazon’s MechanicalTurk.
Similar to Frenda et al’s (2013) study of
political events, images portrayed either a
prominent religious or atheist figure as a
perpetrator of either a positive or a
negative event. One item from each
category was actual the other was
fabricated.
In general, religious people were more
likely than nonreligious people to falsely
remember the events in each category
except for the positive atheist events.
Valence did not predict false memory for
any of the events.
Study 1
495 adult participants were recruited for the study via
Amazon’s MechanicalTurk .
Participants were directed to surveymonkey.com to
complete demographic questions, and indicate their
memory and attitude toward eight images presented in
the same pseudorandom order. The images included 4
religious events (2 positive, 2 negative) and 4 atheist
events (2 positive, 2 negative). For each type, there was
one actual event and one fabricated event.
Data was transformed for skew, standardized, and
analyzed using hierarchical linear regression models.
Consistent with Frenda et al. (2013), memory for the
true event was entered into the first step as a control.
Religious category and a measure of valence (liking of
the event) was entered into the second step with the
interaction between valence and religious category in
the third step.
Religious Nonreligious Total
Female 150 90 240
Male 145 110 255
Total 295 200 495
Religiou
s
Nonreligiou
s
Total
Female 90 64 154
Male 81 71 152
Total 171 135 306
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a Provost’s
undergraduate research grant and a
Rosen fellowship from Oakland
University
Contact: vonk@oakland.edu,
eksearle@oakland.edu
*The interaction for positive atheist events was not
significant