Shrinithi Sathiyaseelan - Week #15: The Misinformation Effect
Photo Credit: https://yourwordsmith.com/the-misinformation-effect/
When you and your friend are telling a story together, it may often change with countless retellings. It could get a little more dramatic, funnier, or scarier. It may even be hard to agree on some of the details, or you might even recall events with such great differences that you're not even sure if your friend was there. One explanation for this occurrence is called the misinformation effect: when our memory for past events is altered after exposure to misleading information.
Elizabeth Loftus, an American psychologist best known in relation to the misinformation effect, conducted an experiment in the 1970s on the malleability of memory. She showed the tape of a car crash and asked participants to predict the speed of the cars. Some participants were asked about the cars’ speed after they “hit” each other, and other participants were asked the same question using the word “smashed.” The group asked using the word “smashed” gave a higher speed prediction than the other participants and were more likely to incorrectly recall broken glass at the scene when interviewed a week later.
Our memory is so malleable that changing someone's state (such as through hypnosis) can increase the likelihood of this effect. Studies from the 1990s suggested that even fully fake, traumatic false memories can be planted in someone's mind, such as drowning or being attacked. Participants can even recite those false memories vividly and confidently.
The fact that our memories are so malleable makes it even more so that we should be careful of fake news and misinformation. One study found that post-learning stress can reduce the misinformation effect. Either way, knowing how this effect is important, as studies investigating it are heavily applied in law. Legal scholars are aware that even minute misinformation before and during cross-examination can substantially change witnesses' memory.
Hey Shrinithi! I definitely feel the effect of a malleable memory where someone once managed to convince me that Denver was not in Colorado. The implications of this are terrifying though. Can you imagine a world where law enforcement can simply convince us that we committed a crime? The misinformation you cite is also terrifying since so many people are easily misled by bad actors who just want to take advantage of these qualities of our memory.
ReplyDeleteHi Shrinithi, this is a very interesting yet terrifying thing to think about. In law enforcement, authorities are able to figure out the truth behind the events of a crime largely because of the words of witnesses. However, if a subject is being interrogated as a potential criminal, which in itself is already a highly stressful situation, plus the police is questioning them are using manipulative tricks to try and get them to confess as guilty, innocent people may just get convinced that they were the ones guilty of the crimes and own up to it. This makes me wonder how many often innocent people end up getting convinced of doing a crime when in reality their memories were just altered.
ReplyDeleteHey Shrinithi! Our brains are extremely susceptible to manipulation and coercion and this happens a lot more often than we think. Personally, all this data on the misinformation effect is really scaring me. I never realized how easily people could manipulate our subconscious thoughts with just a verb. This should definitely raise ethical concerns in the legal spectrum as influenced witnesses can obstruct justice. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSrinithi, this blog post really opened my eyes to something very shocking and terrifying. I have seen this kind of trick being used in crime related tv shows and novels. It makes you think of how many times people in power have done something like play an innocent bystander in the place of the crime and let the criminal walk free due to their power and status. Especially for people of color, hundreds are thrown in jail and accused of crimes they did not commit but are manipulated into thinking they did. This concept definitely scares me for the future of the justice system and its integrity. Thank you for writing such an insightful post.
ReplyDeleteHey Shrinithi, the experiment you mentioned with how just changing the wording can make participants recall the information differently is really interesting and highlights how something as simple as altering words in a statement can affect how our brain remembers things. Knowing how easily our brains can be manipulated is truly terrifying. This makes me question if some of the past events in my memories that I identify as my own are even my own, or if they are even accurate at all. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Shrinithi! The topic of your blog reminded me of a game we used to play in elementary school called Telephone which involved a message which starts off from one person and gets whispered down a chain of people, in the end, the message always gets super messed up and sounds nothing like the original message. I think it is very interesting how the way things are worded or stated can change and alter people’s memory of things. This definitely makes us more vulnerable to misinformation, but I wonder if it also makes us more acceptive of things. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Shrinithi, I did not realize that when we told stories over and over our memories would be slightly altered from false information. I also did not know that when certain words are used to describe a memory, or words that are more extreme or dramatic, the story would be retold in a more dramatic tone. I wonder if there is a way to prevent this from happening because if it could happen to anyone at any time, eye-witnesses would be far less reliable which could jeopardize past trials.
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ReplyDeleteHey Shrinithi, this "misinformation effect" really goes to show the questionable accuracy of our brain's past memories. While we do vividly remember some factual events, it may also be a simple complete recreation of our brain's imagination. For example, I was recently shown a picture of me playing on a playground when I was around three years old. The image had a picture of a child that resembled me, and upon seeming my face I somewhat recalled a distant memory of playing on that playground. But now, looking back, I really do not have the faintest memory of me actually playing in that playground, only the memory of the image that was shown to me. Who knows, maybe I never visited that playground in my life, and that image of a toddler was someone completely different.
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