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Category: Project

Description: The goal of this study is to test the automatic associations between evidence and guilt with a control Guilty list that is more weakly associated with “guilty.” To accomplish this, we will decrease the list from a 14-word list used in previous research to a 7-word list and address the question: Do some forms of evidence show greater automatic associations with guilt than others in a 7-word list? Traditionally, a DRM list presents words in order of decreasing association: thus, the strongest-associated word is presented first, and the weakest-associated word is presented last (Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Stadler, Roediger, & McDermott, 1999). However, because it is our goal to decrease the associative strength of our list, including the most strongly-associated words may not be the best strategy. Therefore, which words we ultimately include in our 7-word list is as important a consideration as the length of the list. We hypothesize that by shortening the list to a 7-word list by removing the three most strongly associated-words and the 4 most weakly-associated words, false alarm rates to the critical lure will decrease (Study 1 Pilot Testing). Then, using this new 7-word list, we hypothesize participants in a Confession List and DNA List condition will false alarm to the critical lure more than participants in the Control List, Fingerprint List, and Eyewitness List conditions (Study 1). Given the results of the pilot testing, we will use the Strong Association list as the control for Study 1. For the evidence lists, we will drop the last word on the Control list, and place one evidence form into the 4th position on the list.