 We have two speakers and we will start with Professor Ramald Polcik. Dr. Polcik is a professor at Jagiellonian University in Psychology. He's internationally renowned for his work within forensic psychology and here especially within witness psychology. In his talk today he will focus on how we can induce resistance to misinformation in the context of witness psychology. Both talks today are going to be about 20 minutes and we will take five to ten minutes questions and answers afterwards. So Professor Polcik, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Well, okay, can you see the screen? Yes, we can. Okay. First of all, allow me to express my gratitude that I was invited to this conference. I am grateful because for a long time I am very interested in the topic of inducing resistance to social influence. Okay, this conference is about web immunization. How can online social networks create collective resilience against misinformation? I am very interested in some broader area, which is however closely related to this, namely, as said, inducing resistance to social influence. For a long time, it is my firm impression that resistance to influence is a seriously underrepresented area. Okay, in psychology. People, psychologists seem to be much more interested in research into effective influence than in protecting people from being influenced. This is really striking. Inducing resistance to influence is a very underrepresented area. The disproportion between the number of experiments and research concerning the efficacy of methods of influencing people over those aiming at protecting against influence is enormous. As is the disproportion between the numbers of methods available for exacting influence over the ones serving from protection. It is shocking that existing manuals of social influence, such as the well-known book by Professor Cialdini, who wrote a book about these so-called principles of persuasion. In this book, Professor Cialdini does not mention any, does not cite any research on protecting against influence. This is particularly striking if you consider that Cialdini in this book does discuss methods of protection, but does not cite any existing research. Let's review quickly the rule of reciprocity. The first of the rule he discusses. It means that people feel obliged to give something in return to being given something. So we are sometimes given a small portion of some stuff and we feel obliged to buy more of them. In the last paragraph in the chapter discussing reciprocity, Cialdini mentions how to protect against this method. Namely, he suggests differentiating among donor intentions. We should consider whether the donor is really selfless and really unbiased, but he cites no research to support the efficacy of this method of protection. The next rule, commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent. Cialdini often makes them to stick to a decision even it is plain wrong. Once the decision is reached, we find any possible arguments to support this decision even and to ignore arguments which contradict our decision. Cialdini mentions how to protect against it. For example, we should distinguish consequences from stiffness, from stubborn stiffness. We should avoid a purely mechanical consequence. Again, no research to support the efficacy of this idea. Although any number of research confirming the efficacy of this method. The next rule or method, social proof. We usually tend to do what other people do, especially if we are not sure what we should do. How to protect against people who abuse this method. We should perform a careful analysis of the correctness of the actions and views of other people. Good idea. No doubt, but no research in this book confirming the efficacy of this method of protection. Next method, authority. We tend to obey authority figures. Cialdini suggests if we do not want to be abused by persons or institutions who use this method, we should take away the element of surprise. We should increase our awareness of the power with which authority acts on us. We should consider whether someone who seems to be an authority is really an authority. Again, I begin to be boring and no research to support the efficacy of this method of protection. None at all. Liking. We tend to give in to people we like. So we should consider whether a person who wants something from us has not won our sympathy in an unnaturally short time. If so, it should be a warning according to Professor Cialdini. Again, excellent idea to analyze whether one did not win our sympathy unnaturally quickly, but no research. Confirming this method of protection. And scarcity. When we believe something is short, in short supply, we want it more. They often tell us, the sellers often tell us, please buy because I have the last 10 exemplars of this thing. How to protect, we should control and monitor our own level of arousal. According to Cialdini, it is the arousal. It is the emotions triggered by this technique which make us act quickly and without thinking. So we should think. When we realize that we are in a rush, we should be warned. Again, good idea, but not supported by existing research. In this excellent book, at least in my last edition, Cialdini cites no research about the effectiveness of these methods of protection. This is shocking because he cites, he leased hundreds of studies on the effectiveness of the methods of influence as such. There is a lot of research supporting the efficacy of these methods, such methods or other methods. And there is very little research into effective protection against these methods. Another book, just the second example, a well-known book brought by Pratikhanis and Aronson, Age of Propaganda. The authors mentioned some methods which should protect us against unwanted influence. For example, we should think rationally, more rationally and less emotionally. We should develop a general skeptical attitude. We should learn about techniques of social influence. We should support consumer movements. But it is shocking that in this book, there is not even one experiment cited which would confirm the efficacy of such methods of protection. It is a long time that I am striked by this discovery, by scarcity of research on protecting against social influence at all. Today, I would like to share with you our research concerning protecting against misinformation. Let's say that there seems to be one exception. There is quite a lot of research about inducing resistance to persuasion. This particular situation seems to gain interest from researchers. For a long time, the classical research by McGuire about inoculation states that attitudes could be inoculated against persuasive attacks in much the same way that one's immune system can be inoculated against viral attacks. So he had his participants to be exposed to weak persuasive messages, weak and easy to defend. When the participants were able to resist weak persuasive messages, they become more resistant against stronger persuasive messages. So this seems to be one exception. But other methods of social influence well very little research. Okay, now to our method. As Professor Kunst said, I am interested, especially in forensic psychology and namely in the misinformation effect and the memory misinformation effect or domestic misinformation effect. What is it? Well, it is a situation in which a memory report becomes contaminated with information coming from another source. And the event to which a person was witnessing. Okay, so we have the original information, the event itself. And we have some post event information, which may be incorrect. This post event information may come from various sources, various mass media, but also other witnesses. So the interrogator's questions can include some suggestive cues. Of course, online sources nowadays can be a source of incorrect information as well. Many other sources. Okay, so why is this important? This is important because witness testimony, the testimony by a human, still remains a very important source of information for the legal system for courts. And it is now well established that errors in human testimony are the main cause of wrong decisions reached by courts. If the court, if the judge, the court is able, has some more material evidence, errors are more rare. But if there is only a human witness and he's wrong, the court can reach very wrong decisions. Okay, this is a typical paradigm within which the misinformation effect is usually studied. It should mimic the real sequence of events. In reality, the first thing is that a person is able to see something which has legal consequences. Okay, an event, an original event. In the experiment, the participants in both groups, the misled and the control one, may watch to a video. Okay, presenting some event. Let's assume that a green car was visible in this video. In some time, ranging from minutes to days or even years, the participants are presented with some post-event material. For example, a description of this original film, which in the misled group, in the experimental misled group, contains one or more details which are incongruent with the real content of the original material. For example, it is mentioned that the car, which in reality was green, was red. After another time, the final test takes place in which a series of questions is asked about the original video, including the question, the critical questions relating to the misled details. For example, in this example, was the car green or red? Okay, or what color was the car? The final test can take various forms. This three-stage paradigm should be similar to the real sequence of events in which there is first some event watched by the witness. Afterwards, some misinformation can reach the witness and only afterwards, the witness gives his information, okay, is being interrogated. Okay, it is now well established that in such experiments, the misled group performs worse. It is so well established that for a long time, we no longer check whether the misinformation effect takes place. We rather make research into the mechanisms of the effect and its correlates, or as we are especially interested into methods of protecting witnesses against misinformation. How can we get the witness to be less susceptible to misinformation of various kinds? In devising such method, we made a main assumption. Okay, the assumption is that, in fact, in the moment of the final memory test, in fact, many of the participants do remember the original information. In this example, the green car, as well as the misinformation. So they remember that they saw a green car. And they remember that they were reading about a red car. And now they are asked, what color was the car? Many of them give answers consistent with the post information, okay, with the false information, not with their own correct memory. Why? Because they lack confidence in their own memories. They do not trust their memories. They have time to side research confirming that this is real, okay, that many subjects do remember both sources of information, give information consistent with the post event material, and ask why they say, I was not sure. I thought I was wrong. And the text must have been correct. If this is true, then increasing one's confidence in their memories should reduce the tendency to rely on external sources of information. If indeed one of the causes of giving in to misinformation is lack, the lack of confidence in one's own memory, then increasing this confidence should reduce the misinformation effect. And this was, well, this was our main assumption. We developed a technique called which we called reinforce self information. This technique was designed to increase the memory confidence of the participants and consists of true core elements self affirmation and positive feedback about memory quality. Another research showed that these two elements increase self confidence. Okay. The technique self confidence consisted simply in writing down one's greatest achievements in life. Okay, so each participant had to write down, think about their greatest achievements in life and write them down. Okay, this was self affirmation. This was the only manipulation. The positive feedback. It was a fake positive feedback manipulated the participants had to memorize 6060 nouns for two minutes. After them they were writing them down. They were counting them, and they were, they were given a false feedback about the population average results, which in fact was one and one and five standard deviation lower than the real average. The most participants learned that their memory was better than the average for the population. So we have these two elements self affirmation and positive feedback. A false one, but the participant didn't know this. So that reinforced self affirmation proved effective. As for now it proved effective in over 20 experiments. I just remember one experiment in which it was not effective. Okay. About 20 experiments using various variations of this technique and various variations of the procedure of the three stage procedure. We always had the effect. Okay, so it is promising. It is promising, but I should add the main problem and limitation with this technique. It is promising, but it is impossible to use in real life settings. Okay, this is obvious. You cannot make real witnesses write down the latest achievements in life. This is too strange. Obviously, you cannot give them false feedbacks for no matter of the reason. Okay, this would give, this would cause real problems, even legal problems. This would apply to a real witness no matter the reason. So, having confirmed that in this very basic form, increasing self confidence works in this context. We are now thinking very deeply about a technique which would increase self confidence of a real witness which would be able to apply in real life settings. So, in terms of legal complications, psychological complications, we have to be very delicate here, but still the technique should be effective. And this is now our main research topic. Okay, and perhaps increasing self confidence may be effective also in other settings, not only memory misinformation effect and witness testimony. This self confidence may be effective in using collective resilience against misinformation in the context of online social networks. This question brings us back to the main topic of this conference. Thank you very much for your attention.