Thursday, September 27, 2018

False Memories Are More Common Than You Think

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive scientist and law professor who has studied memory for more than 40 years, with a particular focus on how it unfolds in the courtroom, has advanced a number of illuminating studies over the years.

Of those 300, three-quarters of the convictions were the result of the false memories of the accuser.

During her studies - approved by the relevant ethics authorities - her team successfully planted in the participants false memories of being attacked by an aggressive animal, witnessing a demonic possession, and being nearly drowned in childhood.

We can't reliably distinguish true memories from false memories; we need independent corroboration.

Now, Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter explains that false memories form partly because our brains are constructive - they create narratives about our future, which might lead to related memory errors about our past.

Elizabeth Phelps, a psychologist at New York University, reports in Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification that "Unknown to the individual, memories are forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted."

Most of us will never know with any degree of certainty whether Ford's memory is true or false.


https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/cognitive-science-false-memories-more-common-than-you-think/

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