Exploring the Costs and Benefits of Collaboration

When people are asked to recall an event on multiple occasions (e.g., comparing the details reported in an initial eyewitness interview to what an eyewitness later reports at trial), it is likely that discrepancies in recall occur. Over the course of multiple recall attempts, reminisced details are often reported, and prior research shows that these details are as likely to be accurate as details recalled consistently. But no research has examined the impact of collaboration on reminiscing. This is an important question because it is common for a crime to be seen by multiple witnesses. The goal of Experiment 1 is to examine how collaboration impacts recall consistency and reminiscing. Participants viewed 40 objects arranged on a table for five minutes. Participants either Individually completed four recall tests (IIII) or recalled once Individually, Collaborated once, and then completed two more Individual recall tests (ICII). The results revealed that the IIII condition reminisced more on test 3 and had higher accuracy in the objects they reminisced compared to the ICII condition. In other words, collaboration harmed the reminisce process. Experiment 2 used a video stimulus and found, on test 3, that the collaboration (ICII) condition reminisced more details and had higher accuracy in those details than the IIII condition. Two possibilities that can explain these differing results are that the Experiment 2 stimulus was an event that had a narrative making it easier to remember and there were more opportunities to reminisce since a video has more moving parts compared to the objects in Experiment 2