Collaborative recall reduces the effect of a misleading post event narrative

Witnesses are susceptible to misinformation from various sources but collaborative recall can reduce the effects of self-generated misinformation (e.g. Ross, Spencer, Blatz, & Restorick, 2008). We investigated whether collaborative recall could reduce misinformation effects produced by a narrative description of the witnessed event. 175 college students viewed a video of a car accident before reading a narrative recap and completing a recall task individually or collaboratively. A 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA for independent groups revealed a misinformation effect, greater recall accuracy for collaborative pairs than individuals, and a reduction in the misinformation effect for collaborative pairs. Results are consistent with past research on the positive effect of collaborative recall and lead to additional questions about the persistence of this effect.