Altering false reports via confederate influence

Abstract
The present experiment examined the effects of confederate influence on the likelihood that participants would claim to have witnessed non‐existent footage of a highly charged public event. A total of 48 participants completed a questionnaire, in the presence of a confederate, concerning their memory for (non‐existent) closed circuit television (CCTV) footage of an explosion in a Bali nightclub. Overall, 19 participants (39%) claimed falsely to have seen this non‐existent footage. Furthermore, participants increased or suppressed their false reports in line with confirmative or disconfirmative social influence exerted by the confederate.