Eyewitness Misinformation Susceptibility Across Data Collection Contexts: Comparing Laboratory, Online, and Prolific Participant Responses

Abstract

In recent years, many eyewitness misinformation studies have moved from face-to-face to online data collection. However, the impact of different data collection contexts on misinformation susceptibility has not yet been investigated. In Study 1, we compared results from the same experiment conducted in two different data collection contexts–in person in a Laboratory and online via the recruitment platform Prolific–and found that Prolific participants were both less accurate overall and more susceptible to misinformation. Furthermore, we replicated a previous finding that increased visual perceptual load in a scene reduces eyewitness recall accuracy, but observed this effect in the Laboratory group only. In Study 2, we added a General Online group to test whether these differences extended to all online data collection, or if they were specific to Prolific participants. Misinformation susceptibility in the General Online group was similar to the Laboratory group, and significantly lower than that in the Prolific group. However, perceptual load effects were also absent in the General Online group. Ultimately, these findings indicate that different data collection contexts yield varying results in eyewitness misinformation studies. Researchers should exercise caution when selecting recruitment approaches, as attentional engagement and experimental control differ across contexts.