BARTLETT

• Study design

  • Lab study with some control over possible extraneous variables
  • Standardized so could be replicated easily
  • Participants were undergraduate English students at the University of Cambridge
• Method

  1. Participants were asked to read the Native American folk tale "the war of the ghost" twice to themselves

  2. After 15 minutes they were asked to tell the story to another person and then that person etc

  3. A note was made of each report so Bartlett could see how the story changed from person to person
• Other psychologists have since replicated the study and found similar results
• White participants were shown a picture of a black man and white man fighting and asked to describe it to the next person


  • At the end of the, the black person was depicted as having a weapon when it was actually the white person
• Aim

   to see if people would alter info to make it make more sense to them when given an unfamilar story
• Results

  after the story had been told 10 times

  -the passages became shorter from 330-150

  -omissions were made- the mention of ghosts were gone despite the title

  -Changes to detail- canoe -boat,rowing-paddling

  -order of events was changed
• Conclusion

  Memory is distorted by what we already know about the world. Influenced by streotypes and beliefs
• Evaluation and Limitation

  -barlett tested memory in a more meaningful way and in a more relavant way to how we use our memories. IRL we often tell people what happened and they tell others

  People disagree that memory was tested in a meaningful way because the story was deliberately confusing and not similar to everyday experiences

  Psychologist criticised the participants - english students at Cambridge - as they were much better at reading and verbalising a story than a person, older ,younger or not studying english