Feelings of familiarity and false memory for specific associations resulting from mugshot exposure

Alan W. Kersten, Julie L. Earles

This research reveals that mugshot viewing accompanied by questions about an action can cause young adults to associate the pictured person and the queried action, leading to later false recollection of having seen that person perform that action. In contrast, mugshot viewing in older adults can lead to vague feelings of familiarity for the pictured person, encouraging older adults to later falsely recognize the pictured person performing any familiar action. Participants viewed events involving actors performing different actions and then were asked verbal questions about which actor had performed each action, with each question accompanied by mugshots of potential "perpetrators" of the action. In a later recognition test, older adults were more likely to falsely recognize a novel conjunction of a familiar actor and action if they had seen a mugshot of that actor, regardless of whether the mugshot had accompanied a question about that action. In contrast, young adults were more likely to falsely recognize a conjunction event only if it involved an actor whose mugshot had accompanied a question about that particular action. This effect remained when the analysis was limited to trials involving actors whose mugshots had not been previously selected, implicating false recollection rather than commitment effects.