Placement in the LNS or SNL groups qualified the rela-
tionship between awareness and test. For unaware partici-
pants, the biased feedback manipulation was successful across
the three memory tests: LNS and SNL participants always
differed in their criterion placements. Among aware partici-
pants, the LNS and SNL groups differed in the first and
second tests, but not the third. Aware participants were told that a person did not provide their feedback; they were never explicitly told that the feedback itself had been manipulated.
Suspicion aroused from awareness of the source manipulation might have been enough to reduce the strength of the biased feedback manipulation altogether. Indeed, awareness of de-
ception in one experiment had corresponded with persistence of suspicion over time (Epley & Huff, 1998). Work building on Solomon Asch’s (1956) classic conformity paradigm that has indicated that suspicion reduces the conformity effect (Stricker et al. 1967) illustrates this idea. Awareness of deception in one aspect of an experiment (i.e., the “social” source) could create suspicion across the paradigm.