Get Connected: How Facebook Contributes to False Memories

Indianapolis, IN

Past research shows that social media can influence social connectedness, attention, working memory, and memory abilities. However, no studies have looked at the relationships among such social and cognitive factors. We evaluated whether social connectedness affects memory formation, specifically false memory formation, through social media. We hypothesized that those who feel more socially connected would be more vulnerable to forming false memories in response to misinformation found on social media. We invited undergraduate students who scored high (n=38) or low (n=19) in social connectedness on a pretesting questionnaire to participate. Within each of these groups, we randomly assigned approximately half to a social media condition and half to a typical source condition. Participants watched a video of a robbery before reading a Facebook feed (the social media condition) or a typical paragraph (the typical source condition) describing the video’s events. The Facebook feed and paragraph contained both accurate descriptions and misinformation. Participants later took a recall test assessing both their memory and false memory for the details of the video. Together, our results illustrate that social connectedness influences susceptibility to misinformation from varied sources. Contrary to our expectations, participants high in social connectedness were more vulnerable to false memories when reading misinformation conveyed in a typical paragraph than misinformation relayed through a social media source. These findings suggest that individuals who are more socially connected may be better able to recognize the fallibility of information conveyed through social media posts but may also be overly trusting of more conventional sources.