By IANS,
London : Fake video footage can dramatically alter people’s perceptions of events, even convincing them to testify to a non-event, says a new study.
Kimberley Wade, psychology professor from Warwick University (WU), led an experiment to see whether such faux footage could induce people to accuse another of doing something they never did.
Wade found nearly 50 percent of those shown fake footage of something they witnessed first hand were prepared to believe the video version rather than what they actually saw.
“Our research shows that if fake footage is extremely compelling, it can induce people to testify about something they never witnessed,” said Wade.
“As a result, almost anyone can create convincing, yet fake, images or video footage,” which Wade attributes to “rapid advances in digital-manipulation technology over the previous decade”.
Wade’s team filmed 60 subjects participating in a computerised gambling task. They were unknowingly seated beside a researcher as they both separately answered a series of multiple-choice general knowledge questions.
All subjects were given a pile of fake money to gamble with.
Their task was to earn as much money as possible by typing in an amount of money to gamble on the chances of them answering each question correctly. They were told the person who made the highest profit would win a prize.
When they answered each question, subjects saw either a green tick on their computer monitor to show their answer was correct, or a red cross to show it was incorrect. If the answer was wrong, they would be told to return the money to the bank.
After the session, the video footage was doctored to make it look as if the member of the research team sat next to the subject was cheating by not putting money back into the bank.
One third of the subjects were told that the person who sat next to them was suspected of cheating. Another third were told the person had been caught on camera cheating, and the remaining group were actually shown the fake video footage.
All subjects were then asked to sign a statement only if they had seen the cheating take place. Nearly 40 percent of the participants who had seen the doctored video complied.
Another 10 percent signed when asked a second time by the researchers. Only 10 percent of those who were told the incident had been caught on film but were not shown the video agreed to sign, and about five percent of the control group who were just told about the cheating signed the statement.
The study was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.