False Memories Easily Manufactured

[Gord_in_Toronto]

This is a very significant and interesting confirmation on planting of false memories that every skeptic should bookmark.

It has application to all the claims of satanic ritual abuse, false confession to crimes and to many other areas promoted and supported by the woomeisters.

Per the Toronto Star:
Planting false memories fairly easy, psychologists find
New study bolsters notion that memory is fragile and aggressive police interrogations don’t always serve justice.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight...-memories-fairly-easy-psychologists-find.html

And the Abstract from the original paper at: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/14/0956797614562862.abstract

Memory researchers long have speculated that certain tactics may lead people to recall crimes that never occurred, and thus could potentially lead to false confessions. This is the first study to provide evidence suggesting that full episodic false memories of committing crime can be generated in a controlled experimental setting. With suggestive memory-retrieval techniques, participants were induced to generate criminal and noncriminal emotional false memories, and we compared these false memories with true memories of emotional events. After three interviews, 70% of participants were classified as having false memories of committing a crime (theft, assault, or assault with a weapon) that led to police contact in early adolescence and volunteered a detailed false account. These reported false memories of crime were similar to false memories of noncriminal events and to true memory accounts, having the same kinds of complex descriptive and multisensory components. It appears that in the context of a highly suggestive interview, people can quite readily generate rich false memories of committing crime.

 

[Manopolus]

...sort of fits my weird hypothesizing that perhaps we all came from different realities that only actually converge in the present. Maybe it isn't a "false" memory per se... maybe it's just one that doesn't fit with the current state of reality in the present.

...or you could use Occam's Razor, if you prefer being boring.

Playing with time is fun though.

 

[RedPillNeo]

Unless I read it wrong, the researchers did not "plant" a false memory. They told the subjects they had committed a crime, then asked them open-ended questions to provide details.

In the minds of the subjects, there may have occurred some manner of wrongness, pecadillo, or crime that has been conflated in their imagination to become "the crime" that the researcher is talking about. I certainly had a vivid imagination and flair for exaggeration while aged 11-14.

Having grown up 2 suburbs away from the McMartin Preschool, and during the satanic rituals scare heyday, I take a very cold, wary view of claims of recovered memories particularly from youth.

In a discussion of this, I remember psychology students who did an experiment wherein they basically "gaslighted" a younger sibling into believing they had gotten into trouble over some transgression as a young child, with some manner of success. The discussion concluded that it's one thing to "manufacture false memories" of events like knocking over the punchbowl at one's 5th birthday party, but quite another for events like being raped by one's father.

 

[casebro]

It's probably like hypnotism? Easier to convince if the subject COULD HAVE done it on his own?

 

[Delvo]

With suggestive memory-retrieval techniques

...in other words, with the subject's willing participation in trying to do this to himself/herself.

 

[DuvalHMFIC]

I was just watching The Great Courses "Scientific Secrets for a Powerful Memory". The last lecture, the lecturer shows how easy it is for someone to have a false memory.

He listed 15 different terms (like door, pane, curtains, open, breeze, etc.) and then had you wait 1 minute. After that you had 1 minute to write down as many as you could remember. I actually got 13 out of the 15...but the kicker was I also wrote down the word "window", which was not a part of the list. That was what the lecturer said about 50% of people do, due to having a bunch of words associated with window.

The kicker? Not only did I write down window, I wrote it down twice.

It's very possible to have false memories.

 

[Pup]

I was just watching The Great Courses "Scientific Secrets for a Powerful Memory". The last lecture, the lecturer shows how easy it is for someone to have a false memory.

He listed 15 different terms (like door, pane, curtains, open, breeze, etc.) and then had you wait 1 minute. After that you had 1 minute to write down as many as you could remember. I actually got 13 out of the 15...but the kicker was I also wrote down the word "window", which was not a part of the list. That was what the lecturer said about 50% of people do, due to having a bunch of words associated with window.

The kicker? Not only did I write down window, I wrote it down twice.

It's very possible to have false memories.

I wonder if that's a false memory, though, or an attempt at a good guess? I think few people could actually remember 15 words in a list without a mnemonic trick, but they could probably guess at a few they thought sounded right. Personally, if asked, I'd have words on the list that I could say I actually remembered hearing, and others that I thought maybe seemed like a good guess. I don't know which category "window" would be in, but I wouldn't count it as a false memory unless it was in the former.

Though that actually brings up a good question about what's actually a false memory and what's a best guess, and when "best guesses" slide into the category of false memories. If someone asks me "what color was the perpetrator's shirt" I might say I don't remember or if pressured I might give a best guess knowing it's only that, but after giving the same testimony long enough, that guess of a shirt color might turn into a real memory of seeing that color. Or it might always remain in my opinion a guess.

 

[DuvalHMFIC]

It's a good point. For me, I'd call it a false memory though. It's the only word I got wrong, and I was pretty darn sure I'd heard it. And the title of the lecture was "false memories". He went on to describe a study that was done the day after the Challenger exploded. Apparently a professor had his students write down what they were doing the day before when they heard about it. He tracked them down years later and had them write it down again. He also asked them to rate how certain they were of the memories.

Something like 90% of them were substantially different than what they had written down the day after the shuttle exploded. And almost all of that 90% stated they were nearly certain their memories of the event were correct.

 

[Bikewer]

Regarding the implantation of more traumatic memories...The police interrogations involved in some of these false confession cases were extremely prolonged and stressful, often involving young suspects with no counsel present....
Likewise the "therapist" cases where the sessions were again very long, with hypnosis, guided imagery, and plenty of input from the quack/therapist.

 

[Elaedith]

I wonder if that's a false memory, though, or an attempt at a good guess? I think few people could actually remember 15 words in a list without a mnemonic trick, but they could probably guess at a few they thought sounded right. Personally, if asked, I'd have words on the list that I could say I actually remembered hearing, and others that I thought maybe seemed like a good guess. I don't know which category "window" would be in, but I wouldn't count it as a false memory unless it was in the former.

Though that actually brings up a good question about what's actually a false memory and what's a best guess, and when "best guesses" slide into the category of false memories. If someone asks me "what color was the perpetrator's shirt" I might say I don't remember or if pressured I might give a best guess knowing it's only that, but after giving the same testimony long enough, that guess of a shirt color might turn into a real memory of seeing that color. Or it might always remain in my opinion a guess.

It's called the DRM paradigm and the issue of guess versus genuine false memory has been studied extensively. There is plenty of evidence that it generates genuine false memories, using various methods including asking people to choose whether they are guessing or remember the word, participants reporting specific vivid memories of hearing of seeing the non-presented word, and the fact that warning people not to guess does not elminate it. People more prone to this are also prone to false autobiographical memories.

The evidence is summarised here :
http://memorylab.uchicago.edu/pdf/Gallo_2010.pdf

 

[Pup]

It's called the DRM paradigm and the issue of guess versus genuine false memory has been studied extensively. There is plenty of evidence that it generates genuine false memories, using various methods including asking people to choose whether they are guessing or remember the word, participants reporting specific vivid memories of hearing of seeing the non-presented word, and the fact that warning people not to guess does not elminate it. People more prone to this are also prone to false autobiographical memories.

The evidence is summarised here :
http://memorylab.uchicago.edu/pdf/Gallo_2010.pdf

Good information. Thanks!

 

[alfaniner]

I'm pretty sure this thread has been done before...

 

[Pup]

I'm pretty sure this thread has been done before...

Now that you mention it, I remember it too.

 

[dlorde]

With suggestive memory-retrieval techniques

...in other words, with the subject's willing participation in trying to do this to himself/herself.

No, that wasn't the way it was done; the subjects didn't know the study was about false memory.

The ScienceDaily coverage gives an overview of the methodology.

It's really just another confirmation of how easily false, merged, or distorted memories can be generated. Some relevant studies of eyewitness reliability put a 'plant' in a group of witnesses of a staged event, who briefly mentioned a few false details when the groups discussed what had happened. In subsequent individual interviews, many of the group members recalled these false details as if they'd actually seen them, and sometimes even embellished them with additional false detail (without realising it).