Tiffany 15 - False Memories
Memory is unreliable. As time passes, our memory of certain events either fade or alter details so that it can't be fully trusted. Studies have shown that "eyewitness accounts of crime are susceptible to eyewitness accounts of crime are very susceptible to after-the-event suggestion and influence, and, thus, highly unreliable." Memory is also "malleable," and findings show that completely innocent people can be convinced and confess to crimes they did not do.
A study published in 2015 in the journal Psychological Science includes a social experiment where a group of students were told by researchers about a false event that never happened. In only three hours, 70% of them were convinced.
For the experiment, the researchers reached out to the participating students' caretakers, and was able to retrieve some information about events that happened in their past. They then interviewed the students three times each for 40 minutes. In the first interview, the students were told about an event that actually happened in order to establish the interviewer's credibility. They were also told about an event that never happened. Half of the students were told about a false crime they had "committed" in the past, and the other half was told about a traumatic event that did not involve crime. These events were told with vivd detail and imagery, including tids and bits of true details from the student's past to give it believability. In the next two interviewers, students were encouraged to recall as much as they could about both events.
In the end, in the group of students who were told about a false crime they committed, 70% of them came to believe it. They also started "providing elaborate details about the crime — including details of their interactions with police." In the group of students were told about a traumatic event, 76% came to remember this fake event.
Researchers explain that "true and false memory have very similar features." This is scary, as legal systems universally rely heavily on the testimony of witnesses based on their memories. However, if it is this easy to plant and convince a person of a false memory, it would not be a very reliable source.
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Hey Tiffany! This just sounds like really advanced gaslighting not gonna lie. But it really is terrifying that you could just be convinced by a court of law that you commited a crime that you never did. It's also terrifying that you could just create trauma for someone else just by telling them they had it. These kinds of studies really terrify me about the real validity of courts of law truth be told. Apparently truth really is a subjective thing.
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany! This concept seems extremely threatening and scary. While I don’t have an advanced understanding of psychology, I do understand that manipulation and coercion are exceedingly effective and powerful when properly used. This prompts serious ethical concerns as it makes discerning reality from dreams or visions increasingly hard. The world isn’t a particularly safe place, and ensuring we understand what's going on can prepare us for what's to come. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteTiffany, this was definitely an eye catching blog post to read. It is very amazing yet scary to see how easily these people were convinced of committing a crime they did not commit. With just access to the person’s background history and past events they were able to convince innocent people of a crime they “committed”. This made me imagine if this was not an experiment and someone actually did this to an innocent person who was testifying for a trial and due to this kind of psychological intervention they believed they did the crime. Though this experiment is definitely shocking and eye opening, it is also dangerous.
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany, it is crazy how people can convince people into believing false memories through deliberate manipulation. I read an article kind of similar along the lines of someone telling another person about their experience, causing the other person to think that event actually happened to them. To elaborate, this neurologist vividly wrote about a traumatic memory he experienced when he was young, but it turns out he never experienced the incident and those details he remembered were actually just from a letter written by his older brother. Knowing how people can even mistakenly recall other’s experiences as experiences of their own is fascinating yet terrifying at the same time. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany! It is terrifying to think that we can be so susceptible and vulnerable to such manipulation. I think I've read about a similar study, so this phenomenon has definitely been proven by multiple sources. This could lead people who committed a crime to have other people go to jail for them, and even convince them that they themselves had done it. This is a very scary but eye opening realization, and it goes to show just how powerful our memories can be.
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany! I think it is so scary how we can convince ourselves to believe something that is not true. In fact, the occurrence of false memories has frequently caused me to doubt what I remember to be true. The most common occurrence of this that happens frequently is when I leave the house and do not remember if I turned off the stove. Deep inside, I have a strong urge that I have already turned it off; however, my memory keeps making up situations where I forgot to. This often causes me the trouble of going back home to double-check only to find that the stove was indeed turned off. It is interesting to learn that the same thing happens to witnesses of crimes. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany, I knew that sometimes memories were not reliable, however, I did not know that they could be manipulated and changed so easily. It is frightening to not be able to tell if an event actually took place or if the idea was just planted into your mind and repeated so much that you eventually convinced yourself that it happened. I wonder if this same experiment can make an individual forget something happened if they were told many times that it didn’t. In these instances, it is a relief that we do have reliable resources such as physical evidence and such. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany, this idea of memories being manipulated is really scary to think about. To think that there is a possibility that memories you hold in the past were actually false and completely imagined really raises multiple questions. How do we know which memories are true? How do we know that we really are not just robots convinced to hold past memories? How do we know we are not simple programs with encoded memories living in a simulation (hmmmmm)? The memories we store in our head, the specific way we remember a certain event, there is no way to fact check them, except with ourselves.
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