Month: August 2021

Dramatic examples of false memory, implanting false memories and seminal research by Professor Elizabeth Loftus.

A false memory in psychology is a fabricated or distorted recollection.

False memories could be imaginary, distorted or even implanted by someone else.

False memories are common because memory is not a perfect recording device.

Instead, memory is highly prone to influence, as we shall see in these dramatic false memory examples.

False memory example: The George Franklin case

In 1990 George Franklin became the first ever US citizen convicted of murder by a witness who recovered false memories more than 20 years after the event.

The fact that the witness was Franklin’s daughter, Eileen, ensured the case was splashed across the news media.

Franklin was released in 1996 after 6 years in prison when irregularities were discovered in Eileen’s evidence: it emerged she had been hypnotised before testifying, when the false memory was probably created.

There is a good reason why hypnotised witnesses are barred from testifying in some jurisdictions: under hypnosis people are highly suggestible to false memory.

Implanting false memories

Even without hypnosis, studies show that people’s memories are open to influence.

But, can it be demonstrated in the lab that a false memory can be implanted?

False memories are hard to research for one simple reason: it’s difficult to verify whether a false memory is really false or not (Loftus, 1993).

Often a considerable amount of time has passed since the original event and it’s not possible to corroborate what people say a false memory.

But, while it’s difficult, it’s not impossible – it just takes some concerted effort.

Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, has been at the forefront of psychological research into false memory and repressed memories and testified in George Franklin’s case.

She has also carried out some fascinating research into the possibility of implanting a false memory.

False memory of being lost in the mall

In a seminal false memory study Loftus and Pickrell (1995) recruited 24 participants who were to be presented with four stories from when they were between 4 and 6 years old, three of which were true, and one false.

To get the true stories, the researchers spoke to participants’ relatives to get three events for each person which had really happened.

The events were chosen so that they were not traumatic or emotionally difficult to recall.

Each family was also asked to provide the circumstances of another event that could possibly have happened, but didn’t.

This was the target false memory to be implanted.

In each case the false memory was for getting lost in a shopping mall.

Relatives provided details for the false memory of a specific shopping mall it could have been along with other details to make the fake story plausible.

They also confirmed that an event like this had not actually occurred — it definitely was a false memory.

Do you remember this false memory?

Participants themselves were told they were involved in a study about their ability to recall details of childhood memories.

They weren’t told it was about false memory.

Each participant was first sent a written description…

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Suggestibility in psychology is a major contributor to wrongful convictions, through biased eyewitness testimony.

Suggestibility in psychology refers to the tendency to fill in gaps in memory with information from others that may well be incorrect.

When people are experiencing intense emotions, they show more suggestibility.

In addition, some people display more suggestibility than others, such as those with low self-esteem or who are less assertive.

Suggestibility involves false memory

Suggestibility, one of Daniel Schacter’s sins of memory, is a close cousin of misattribution.

Like misattribution, suggestibility involves the creation of a false memory.

But, while a misattribution is of our own making, a suggestion comes from someone else who is, whether intentionally or not, influencing us.

Human suggestibility has many implications, but some of its most devastating consequences have been played out in the criminal justice system.

Criminal justice systems around the world have treated human memory with undeserved reverence for a long time, while ignoring our inherent suggestibility.

Dubious eyewitness testimony has frequently secured convictions for the most serious of crimes.

Even more incredibly for students of scientific psychology, repressed memories rising to the surface decades after the original event have been accepted by courts as the basis to lock a man away for the rest of his life.

Given the right circumstances people will finger the wrong suspect in a line-up, manufacture false memories and even change their beliefs after having their dreams interpreted.

Example of suggestibility in eyewitness testimony

Faulty eyewitness testimony is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the US.

On the basis of mounting evidence, psychologists have argued that a major contributing factor to these wrongful convictions is suggestibility (Schacter, 1999).

Dramatic evidence for how easily eyewitnesses are swayed through suggestibility comes from a study carried out by Gary Wells and Amy Bradfield at Iowa State University (Wells & Bradfield, 1998).

Like many of the best studies it is deceptively simple, but its implications for the criminal justice system are profound.

Spot the gunman

Participants were asked to watch 8 seconds of grainy security camera footage showing a man walking into a store.

The footage was slowed down so that participants could get as much information as possible.

The quality of the video, however, was not that good.

After watching the video, participants were told that the man is a murderer.

Just after the footage cuts away, the man shot and killed the store’s security guard.

This information is not misleading – the CCTV footage is real – as is the subsequent murder of the security guard.

Participants were then told that their job is to identify the killer from a five-person photospread.

This photospread was identical to the one used in the real case except – and here’s the twist – the real gunman has been removed.

Having been told, though, that the gunman is in the photospread, all the participants identify one of the men.

This is where the experimenters got clever.

They then introduced three different experimental manipulations:

• One group of participants were given no feedback on their choice of suspect.
• The second were told they had made the wrong choice…

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