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Focus&Questions& Article&3:&“Memories&of&Things&Unseen”&

By&E.&F.&Loftus& & Remember:'You'do'not'have'to'answer'all'of'these'questions'in'your'summary'and' application'essays.'An'understanding'of'these'focus'questions'will'help'you'synthesize'your' responses'to'the'essay'questions'in'the'quiz.' ' As'you'read'the'Loftus'article'and'write'your'summary'consider:'

• What'is'the'main'point'of'the'article?' • What'do'we'know'about'memory'and'false'memories'from'studies'that'use'the'“lost'

in'the'mall”'procedure,'according'to'Loftus?' • Why'do'we'need'studies'that'attempt'to'plant'implausible'or'impossible'memories?' • Loftus'mentions'a'few'of'the'“most'powerful'methods'of'suggestion;”'give'examples'

of'these'from'the'research.' • Why'is'this'research'important?'What'are'some'negative'consequences'of'false'

memories?' '

As'you'read'the'Loftus'article'and'write'your'application'consider:' • Given'what'you'learned'about'the'three'processes'of'memory'(Chapter'9:'The'

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• The'Loftus'(2004)'article'mentions'that'many'therapy'techniques'use'“imaginationS based'interventions”'(pg.'145).'Looking'ahead'to'Chapter'15:'Healing'the'Troubled' Mind:'Therapy,'how'might'studies'of'false'memory'inform'psychotherapy?'

• What'other'aspects'of'this'article'remind'you'of'topics'addressed'(or'to'be' addressed)'in'class?'(Tip:'Review'relevant'material'covered'in'Chapter'4:'The' Biological'Mind:'The'Physical'Basis'of'Behavior'and'Chapter'9:'The'Knowing'Mind:' Memory).'

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Focus&Questions& Article&3:&“Memories&of&Things&Unseen”&

• What'is'the'main'point'of'the'article?' • What'do'we'know'about'memory'and'false'memories'from'studies'that'use'the'“lost'

of'these'from'the'research.' • Why'is'this'research'important?'What'are'some'negative'consequences'of'false'

memories?' '

As'you'read'the'Loftus'article'and'write'your'application'consider:' • Given'what'you'learned'about'the'three'processes'of'memory'(Chapter'9:'The'

Knowing'Mind:'Memory),'how'might'false'memories'be'introduced'in'encoding,' storage,'and/or'retrieval'of'memories?'

' Please&note:&References&to&chapter&numbers&above&are&specific&to&the&OSU&custom&edition&of&

the&Cacioppo&&&Freberg&2e&(2015)&textbook&and&may&not&correspond&to&the&textbook&used&in&

the&Honors&sections&of&Psychology&1100.&

' '

Memories of Things Unseen Elizabeth F. Loftus

University of California, Irvine

ABSTRACT—New findings reveal more about the malleability of memory. Not only is it possible to change details of memories for previously experienced events, but one can sometimes also plant entirely false memories into the minds of unsuspecting individ- uals, even if the events would be highly implausible or even impossible. False memories might differ statistically from true ones, in terms of certain characteristics such as confidence or vividness, but some false memories are held with a great degree of confidence and expressed with much emotion. Moreover, false memories can have consequences for later thoughts and be- haviors, sometimes rather serious ones.

KEYWORDS—memory; false memory; suggestibility

Faulty memory has led to more than its share of heartbreak. The cases

of individuals who have been released from prison after DNA evi-

dence revealed their innocence make compelling examples. Larry

Mayes of Indiana had the dubious distinction of being the l00th such

person to be freed in the United States. He was convicted of raping a

gas station cashier after the victim positively identified him in court.

Apparently it did not matter that she had failed to identify him in two

earlier lineups and did so in court only after she was hypnotized by the

police. Mayes spent 21 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Attorney Thomas Vanes had prosecuted Mayes, believing at the time

that Mayes was guilty. But two decades later, after Vanes saw the

result of old evidence being subjected to new DNA testing, he

changed his mind. ‘‘He was right, and I was wrong,’’ wrote Vanes

(2003), in a newspaper op-ed piece arguing for the DNA testing of

another individual who was awaiting execution for an ugly robbery-

murder of an elderly couple. For Vanes, it was a ‘‘sobering lesson.’’

The DNA exonerations have taught all of us a sobering lesson,

namely, that faulty memory is the major cause of wrongful convictions.

Concerns about justice are but one reason why the study of memory is

so important.

MEMORY DISTORTION: FROM CHANGING DETAILS TO

PLANTING FALSE MEMORIES

Pick up any textbook in the field of memory or cognition, and you will

invariably find mention of faulty memory. That has been true for

decades. But lately, the study of memory distortion has been thriving.

In the 1970s through 1990s, hundreds of studies showed the power of

new information to contaminate memory reports. Stop signs became

yield signs, hammers turned into screwdrivers, and broken glass got

‘‘added’’ to memories for accidents. The inaccuracies in memory

caused by erroneous information provided after the event became

known as the ‘‘misinformation effect.’’

In the mid 1990s, memory investigators went further. It was one

thing to change a detail in memory for a previously experienced event,

but quite another thing to plant an entirely false memory into the

mind. Using fairly strong suggestions, investigators succeeded in

getting people to incorrectly believe that when they were children,

they had been lost in a shopping mall for an extended time, hospi-

talized overnight, or involved in an unfortunate accident at a family

wedding (see Loftus, 1997). The ‘‘strong suggestion’’ involved enlist-

ing the help of family members to construct scenarios describing true

and false experiences and feeding these scenarios to the subjects as if

they were all true. The method was later dubbed the ‘‘familial-in-

formant false-narrative procedure’’ (Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, &

Garry, 2004), but it is easier to call it the ‘‘lost in the mall’’ procedure.

After being fed suggestive information that ostensibly came from their

relatives, a significant minority of subjects came to accept all or part

of the suggestion and claimed it as their own experience.

Would people also fall sway to suggestion if the to-be-planted event

was particularly horrible? The answer is yes, as revealed in one study

that convinced one third of subjects that when they were children they

had nearly drowned and had to be rescued by a lifeguard (Heaps &

Nash, 2001). Another research group convinced about half of their

subjects that they had had particularly awful experiences as children,

such as being a victim of a vicious animal attack (Porter, Yuille, &

Lehman, 1999).

The suggestion used in these lost-in-the-mall studies was strong. In

the real world, some forms of suggestion that are used are far more

subtle. Perhaps their persuasive powers would be weaker. Take guided imagination, a technique in which individuals are led to imagine that they have had experiences (like breaking a window) that they have

previously denied. Even a minute’s worth of such imagination can

increase people’s confidence that in the past they had an experience

like the imagined one—a phenomenon called imagination inflation. (See Garry & Polaschek, 2000, for an excellent review.) Imagining

another person engaged in an event can also increase your confidence

that it happened to you. Finally, some individuals, such as those who

tend to have lapses in memory and attention, are more susceptible to

imagination inflation than others. The clinical implications are evi-

dent—many therapy techniques involve imagination-based interven-

tions; their capacity for distorting autobiography (an unexpected side

effect?) needs to be appreciated.

Address correspondence to Elizabeth F. Loftus, 2393 Social Ecology II, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-7085; e-mail: eloftus@ uci.edu.

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

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PLANTING FALSE MEMORIES OR EXTRACTING TRUE

MEMORIES?

When people claim, after suggestion, that they were lost in a mall, or

attacked by an animal, perhaps the suggestive manipulation has ex-

tracted true memories rather than planting false ones. This quite-le-

gitimate challenge has been met with research efforts to plant memories

of events that would be highly implausible or even impossible.

In one such study, subjects evaluated advertisements under a

pretense. One of the ads was for Disneyland and featured Bugs Bunny

by the magic castle. The text made reference to meeting Bugs—the

perfect end to the perfect day. After evaluating this ad, or a control ad,

subjects were asked about their own childhood experiences at Dis-

neyland (Braun, Ellis, & Loftus, 2002). About 16% of those who had

been exposed to the fake Bugs ad later said they had personally met

Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Later studies showed that with multiple

exposures to fake Disney ads that mentioned Bugs Bunny, the per-

centages rose even higher. Many of those subjects who fell sway to the

suggestion remembered the impossible encounter in quite a bit of

detail (e.g., they hugged Bugs or touched his ear). Of course, this

memory is impossible because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. char-

acter and would not be found at a Disney theme park. But the study

shows that suggestive methods are indeed capable of leading to false

beliefs or memories.

Other efforts to plant impossible or implausible memories show just

how far one can go in tampering with people’s autobiographies. In one

case, people were led to believe that they had witnessed a person

being demonically possessed as a child (Mazzoni, Loftus, & Kirsch,

2001). In the most powerful of these studies, subjects read articles

that described demonic possession and were designed to increase its

plausibility. One article was a testimonial from a prominent individual

describing his own childhood experience with witnessing a posses-

sion. Subjects also received false feedback about causes of certain

fears; they were told that witnessing a possession probably led to their

particular childhood fears. Finally, they answered questions about

their own childhood experiences. Relative to control subjects, those

who had received the suggestion were more confident that they had

witnessed possession as a child.

In yet another study, subjects were led to remember an event that

never occurs in the country in which they lived, namely, ‘‘having a

nurse remove a skin sample from my little finger’’ before age 6 (Maz-

zoni & Memon, 2003, p. 187). The most powerful method of suggestion

in this study involved having subjects imagine that they had had the

experience.

Perhaps you are thinking that these events are not sufficiently

implausible—that Bugs might not be at Disneyland but other rabbits

are, that demonic possession may not have been witnessed but other

bizarre behavior was. Such critiques have encouraged researchers to

come up with new pseudoevents that are less susceptible to these

charges. Some researchers have also tried to make the false event so

specific that it is unlikely to have happened to large numbers of

people. So, in another study, subjects were persuaded that they had

gotten in trouble with a friend for putting Slime (a brightly colored

gelatinous substance manufactured as a toy) in their teacher’s desk

when in the first or second grade (Lindsay et al., 2004). The pseu-

doevent was chosen to be distinctive and memorable, and neither

entirely implausible nor likely actually to have occurred. What was

surprising about the findings was the sheer number of people who were

led to believe that they had ‘‘Slimed’’ their teacher. The most powerful

method of suggestion in this study involved the combination of a

narrative and a photo ostensibly provided by the subject’s parents. The

narrative for the pseudoevent was customized for each subject by

inserting the subject’s name and the teacher’s name into it:

I remember when Jane was in Grade 1, and like all kids back

then, Jane had one of those revolting Slime toys that kids used to

play with. I remember her telling me one day that she had taken

the Slime to school and slid it into the teacher’s desk before she

arrived. Jane claimed it wasn’t her idea and that her friend de-

cided they should do it. I think the teacher, Mrs. Smollett, wasn’t

very happy and made Jane and her friend sit with their arms

folded and legs crossed, facing a wall for the next half hour.

(Lindsay et al., 2004, p. 150)

The photo provided was the subject’s actual class photo for Grade 1 or 2.

Using a fairly strict criterion for classifying a response as a pseu-

domemory, Lindsay and his colleagues found that when subjects re-

turned to the lab for a second interview, more than 65% of subjects

had developed such memories. Moreover, when debriefed and told

their memories were false, some individuals expressed great surprise,

as revealed in their verbalizations: ‘‘You mean that didn’t happen to

me?’’ and ‘‘No way! I remember it! That is so weird!’’ (Lindsay et al.,

2004, pp. 152–153).

So (almost certainly), false memories do get planted by suggestion.

Some methods are more powerful than others, leading to very high

rates of false-memory reports. In the Slime study, the suggestion in-

cluded a suggestive narrative ostensibly provided by an authoritative

figure, namely, the subject’s parent. Moreover, the class photo may

have added to the authoritativeness of the suggestive narrative and

increased the subject’s confidence that the Slime event happened. The

photo may have further encouraged speculation about the details of

the pseudoevent. So, for example, a subject looking at the photo might

have mused over who the co-perpetrator might have been in the Slime

prank and even picked out a likely candidate. Finally, these studies

indicate that rather unlikely events can be planted in the mind, and

they counter the criticism that the events planted in such studies

revive true memories.

CHARACTERISTICS OF FALSE MEMORIES

Can we tell the difference between true memories and false ones?

Many studies show that there are some statistical differences, that true

memories are held with more confidence or seem more vivid than false

ones. But other studies do not demonstrate such differences. In the

Slime study, for example, subjects rated their memories on a number

of scales, including scales indicating their confidence that the event

actually took place and the extent to which they felt their memory

experience resembled reliving the event. False memories were as

compelling as true memories, at least on these dimensions.

Are false memories felt with as much emotion as true ones? One

answer to this question comes from research on individuals who

presumably have false memories of events not planted experimentally.

In a study of people who have memories of abduction by space aliens

(McNally et al., 2004), physiological measures (e.g., heart rate and

electrical conductance of the skin) were taken while abductees lis-

tened to tape-recorded accounts of their reported alien encounters.

146 Volume 13—Number 4

Memories of Things Unseen

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The abductees showed greater reactivity to their abduction scripts

than to other scripts (positive and neutral). Moreover, this effect was

more pronounced among the abductees than among control subjects

who did not have abduction memories and listened to the same ac-

counts. Assuming no one was actually abducted, these results suggest

that false memories of abduction can produce very strong physiolog-

ical responses. Thus, a memory report accompanied by strong emotion

is not good evidence that the memory report reflects a genuine ex-

perience (see also McNally, 2003).

CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE MEMORIES

Changing beliefs or memories can influence what people think or do

later. In one study, people who were led by a fake advertisement to

believe that they met Bugs at Disneyland were later asked to say how

associated various pairs of characters were in their minds (e.g., How

associated are Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse? How associated are

Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse?). Those who fell for the fake ad and

believed that they had met Bugs later on claimed that Bugs Bunny was

more highly related to various Disney characters than did people who

were not exposed to the fake ad. This suggests that the thought

processes of ad-exposed individuals can be influenced (see Loftus,

2003, for other examples).

There are also real-world examples showing how false memories

can have repercussions. Recall the Heaven’s Gate cult, a group whose

members had been led to believe they were in telepathic contact with

aliens. Apparently the cult members had taken out an insurance

policy, to insure against being abducted, impregnated, or killed by

aliens. The group paid $l,000 a year for this coverage. So clearly their

(presumably false) beliefs had economic consequences (Siepel, 1997).

Thirty-nine members of the cult participated in the ultimate act of

consequence: They partook in a mass suicide in 1997, killing them-

selves under the belief that to do so would free their souls.

FINAL REMARKS

There is now ample evidence that people can be led to believe that

they experienced things that never happened. In some instances,

these beliefs are wrapped in a fair amount of sensory detail and give

the impression of being genuine recollections. Some researchers have

suggested that implausible or unlikely events will be hard to plant into

the minds of adults or children, but in fact people can be led to believe

in experiences that are highly unlikely to be true (e.g., witnessing

demonic possession, being abducted by aliens, being hugged by Bugs

Bunny at Disneyland). In one recent study of false memories in

children, the children came up with elaborate stories for such unlikely

events as helping a woman find her lost monkey and helping a person

who injured her ankle after spilling Play-Doh (Scullin, Kanaya, &

Ceci, 2002). These ‘‘rich’’ false memories can have repercussions

down the line, affecting later thoughts and behaviors.

A half century ago, Frederic C. Bartlett, the psychologist from

Cambridge, England, shared his important insights about memory. He

posited that remembering is ‘‘imaginative reconstruction, or con-

struction,’’ and ‘‘it is thus hardly ever exact’’ (Bartlett, 1932, p. 213).

His insights link up directly with contemporary research on memory

distortion, although even he might have been surprised to find out

just how inexact memory can be. He might have also relished the

contemporary research, which has brought us quite a ways toward

understanding what it is like for people when they experience

‘‘imaginative construction’’ in both experimental and real-world set-

tings. Bartlett died in 1969, just missing the beginning of a vast effort

to investigate the memory processes that he so intelligently fore-

shadowed, and that show unequivocally how humans are the authors

or creators of their own memories. They can also be the authors or

creators of someone else’s memory.

Recommended Reading Lindsay, D.S., Hagen, L., Read, J.D., Wade, K.A., & Garry, M. (2004). (See

References)

Loftus, E.F. (2002). Memory faults and fixes. Issues in Science and Technology, 18, 41–50.

Loftus, E.F. (2003). (See References)

McNally, R.J. (2003). (See References)

REFERENCES

Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psy- chology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Braun, K.A., Ellis, R., & Loftus, E.F. (2002). Make my memory: How adver- tising can change our memories of the past. Psychology and Marketing, 19, 1–23.

Garry, M., & Polaschek, D.L.L. (2000). Imagination and memory. Current Di- rections in Psychological Science, 9, 6–10.

Heaps, C.M., & Nash, M. (2001). Comparing recollective experience in true and false autobiographical memories. Journal of Experimental Psychol- ogy: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 920–930.

Lindsay, D.S., Hagen, L., Read, J.D., Wade, K.A., & Garry, M. (2004). True photographs and false memories. Psychological Science, 15, 149–154.

Loftus, E.F. (1997). Creating false memories. Scientific American, 277(3), 70–75.

Loftus, E.F. (2003). Make-believe memories. American Psychologist, 58, 864–873.

Mazzoni, G., & Memon, A. (2003). Imagination can create false autobio- graphical memories. Psychological Science, 14, 186–188.

Mazzoni, G.A.L., Loftus, E.F., & Kirsch, I. (2001). Changing beliefs about implausible autobiographical events. Journal of Experimental Psycholo- gy: Applied, 7, 51–59.

McNally, R.J. (2003). Remembering trauma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press.

McNally, R.J., Lasko, N.B., Clancy, S.A., Macklin, M.L., Pitman, R.K., & Orr, S.P. (2004). Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting abduction by space aliens. Psychological Science, 15, 493–497.

Porter, S., Yuille, J.C., & Lehman, D.R. (1999). The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated memories for emotional childhood events: Implications for the recovered memory debate. Law and Human Behavior, 23, 517–537.

Scullin, M.H., Kanaya, T., & Ceci, S.J. (2002). Measurement of individual differences in children’s suggestibility across situations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 233–246.

Siepel, T. (1997, March 31). Leader’s health tied to deaths. San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved June 24, 2003, from http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/ 39dead16.htm

Vanes, T. (2003, July 28). Let DNA close door on doubt in murder cases. Los Angeles Times, p. B11.

Volume 13—Number 4 147

Elizabeth F. Loftus

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