False Memories

Great Debates
21

Maybe the skeptic and the reporter were biased (ok, they were), but I’m not sure what that has to do with the general topic of false memory creation. Indeed, it occurred to me after finishing that post that “psychics” work mainly by creating false memories. If everybody remembered everything about their visit to a “psychic,” they’d go out of business!

Regarding the car crash – yes, it was a “detail.” But, again, experimenters are somewhat limited in how much of a false memory they can really create without ethical implications. The point is that a false memory was created very quickly.

However, if you want an example in which an entire incident was made up out of whole cloth, we can look at the experiments done with children who were asked if they had caught their hand in a mousetrap. None of the children had, of course, but after being asked several times, many agreed that it had happened and some even came up with whole stories about how it had happened (I fell down the stairs to the basement; my hand hit the trap; we had to go to the hospital). It never happened, yet after just a few questions over several days, these kids were sure it had. Here is where we come up against that ethical boundary. The experimenters here apparently decided this was harmless enough of a memory that they could work with it. But I’d say that’s about as far as you’re likely to see them push, ethically-speaking.

22

Melin, as I said before:
Yes, this was a small example. For crying out loud, I do have sufficient ethics to be uncomfortable with the idea of deliberately causing innocent students to generate major, completely false memories! And as I ALSO said before, the POINT of the demonstration was that it is VERY EASY TO GENERATE FALSE MEMORIES! Look at the whole freakin’ “recovered memory” literature- that is EXACTLY cases of people generating large details out of absolutely nothing! The fact that I did not do it as an in-class demo does not mean that it cannot be done!

Yes, it was a perfectly acceptable answer. They were welcome to say “I couldn’t tell, it was in profile,” or “I don’t remember.” Very few did. And yes, there was artificial pressure by dint of being asked the question. The example was usually done in the context of an eyewitness memory lecture, as in when a crime victim is asked to pick the criminal out of a lineup. The pressure factor is very present in that case as well- even more so as they are being asked by an authority figure, a cop or lawyer, to make a decision based on their memory, and there are significant consequences to their decision.

Quite true, and I never said there was. I was only presenting examples to illustrate the fact that memory is terribly malleable and unreliable. Frankly, I don’t really care whether Lib saw the Newlywed Game or not. And it’s fairly irrelevant to the topic of this thread.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

23

The ability to induce false memories in children is a whole 'nother subject in and of itself, of course, and is complicated by the fact that children don’t think the same way that adults do. Thus we had the whole McMartin pre-school fiasco.

But do remember I specifically said “adults.” And even more specifically, mentally alert and healthy adults.

I think when you “force” people to have a “memory”, they will often accomodate that pressure. That’s certainly what documentedly happened with the McMartin thing, and may be what happened with Felice’s students and the dog picture, and even with your auto accident experiment. How “safe” and acceptable was it to give an answer of “I don’t know?”

In the “standard admonitions” that I give to a witness when I am about to take his/her deposition, I always assure them that “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” is an acceptable answer, and that I don’t want them to guess. Most attorneys I have had on both sides of the table with me do that too. Indeed, we even go on to explain that over time we understand that memories fade, and that four people witnessing the same event will see it differently. In other words, we try to create an atmosphere where it is “safe” and “acceptable” to not know the answer, and not to pressure anyone to guess simply to be accomodating (which people will do even subconsciously).

I’m not denying that False Memories occur, by any means. But I think we need to be extremely cautious about labelling someone’s eyewitness testimony as such without a great deal of investigation and examination. It would be the last answer for me, rather than the first.

-Melin

24

Good points, Felice.

I have an acquaintance who agrees that many “recovered” memories are actually false. But, his, he says, are true. Why? Because he didn’t get them thru a therapist. Yes, he was in deep clinical depression at the time, and on medication. Yes, he was seeing a therapist. But he says he came by them on his own. Did he? Not really. In a separate discussion I had with his wife, she told me that he came by them in long discussions with her! She said she knows the signs of repressed abuse and saw them in him and talked to him about it. Hmmm. Ok, so there wasn’t a therapist, but everything else was exactly in place for the creation of false memories – and I think that is exactly what happened. And this is a guy who is usually quite skeptical of such things. But when it involved his own “memories,” well, he believed them. :frowning:

25

Of course, Melin, if somebody has already done a great deal of investigation and come to the “false memory” conclusion, and then somebody new comes along with the same type of story that had been investigated, it’s not at all unreasonable to put that claim in the same category as all the others.

And, yes, I know you mentioned adults, but since you wanted to know about larger-scale memories, I brought up the one about the kids and the mouse trap.

I’m glad you go through all the trouble so people understand that memory is fragile. I only wish it were more commonly-understood in society just how our memories really work. If it were, I suspect we’d have fewer innocent people on death row, and certainly wouldn’t have gone through all the crap with the recovered memory folks and McMartin-type cases.

26

That is an astounding statement to make, particularly given that, with respect to that episode, you believe my closest friends and me to be infested with false memory from head to toe.

27

Lib, one false memory doth not infested make. And we all have false memories. I was watching one of my favorite movies the other night. The part I always remembered was The Big Line, the line that the whole movie led up to. And you know what? I had it wrong. Way wrong. It is no slur on you or anyone to say your memories could be false.

28

I know, Gaudere, but they’re not talking about a single false memory, to wit: (1) I misremember the episode; (2) Edlyn misremembered the episode; (3) my roommate misremembered the episode; (4) I misremembered that my roommate was telling me a story; (5) he misremembered telling it; (6) I misremembered that I’ve never heard of the alleged urban legend; (7) so did she; (8) so did he; (9) my friend, EB, misremembered his sister’s phone call, but; (10) that’s okay, because she misremembers why she made it.

“You are entitled to my opinions, and I will fight to the death for your right to agree with them.” — heard on January 18, 2000 at 4:32 PM Eastern Time from the movie Weapons of Mass Distraction, 1997, with Gabriel Byrne and Ben Kingsly that aired in the 4:30 PM to 6:15 PM time slot on HBO-C by Time-Warner Cable, thus documented this eighteenth day of the first month of the two-thousandth year of our Lord.

29

I am talking about adults, Melin. The demonstrations I have been describing are college students, age 18 and up. And there are a plethora of recovered memory cases involving adults who are ‘recovering’ memories of their childhood. Or more recent events.
Yes, pressure to recall unquestionably DOES impact the memory, and I am very glad that you and your colleagues recognize this and attempt to minimize the impact. Regrettably, not everyone in a position of authority does.

No, Lib, the OP of this thread was about the impact of false and recovered memories. It was not about your memories, false or otherwise, of the newlywed game.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

30

Excuse me, but my name is in the opening sentence of the opening post, I am cited as the one who generated the thread, and the social implications of false memory were only one of three parts to the topic. The one that my experience deals with has a bearing on the false memories that will survive our age.

You simply misremembered the OP.

31

When in doubt, cite the experts. The example David referred to earlier, about the auto accident, was one of a series of empirical studies conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, a premier researcher in human memory. To summarize one of her studies:
(Loftus, E.F., Miller, D.G., & Burns,H.J. Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 1978, 4, 19-31).

Subjects viewed a series of slides depicting successive stages in an auto-pedestrian accident. The vehicle in question made an illegal turn against either an stop sign (for some subjects) or a yield sign (for others). Immediately afterwards, subjects were asked a series of question. One question was “did another vehicle pass the car while it was at the stop (yield) sign”. For half of the subjects, the question matched the slide they had actually seen, for half, it did not-that is, it was misleading information.
AFter a short pause, the subjects were then given a forced-choice recognition task: they were shown two slides, one which came from the series they actually watched, and one which was based on the question they were asked. In one condition, over 80% of subjects picked the wrong slide- that means the indicated that they had seen the slide corresponding to what they had been told- NOT to what they had actually seen.

Now, the question stands, maybe they just plain didn’t register WHAT kind of sign it was. But subjects who were NOT given misleading information correctly identified the sign they had seen, indicating that it was indeed encoded.

Yes, Melin, this was a 'small detail. Everybody correctly remembered that there was an accident, because Loftus didn’t want to deal with the ethics of generating false memories. But in eyewitness recall, the small details are critically important. Was the criminal tall or short? Bearded or no? Black or white? Did the fire start in the bedroom or the kitchen?

Anybody want more references on the subject? I’ve got lots. I can go into research on the efficacy of hypnosis on memory, too, if anybody cares.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

32

You’re right, Lib. I only remembered the part of the OP to which I was interested in responding. Mea culpa.
I still don’t care, though.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

33

Okay. Fair enough.

But I would appreciate your bringing your considerable professional opinion to bear on what might be great urban legends upon which much of the history we teach in schools is based. I know that George Washington’s cherry tree, for example, is pretty much out. But what still endures from more than, say, 200 years ago?

34

Good question, and one I have trouble answering. I am not a historian- although I had classes on that in college, that was many and many a year ago.
Um. Let’s see. Ever hear the one about Katherine of Russia and the horse? That’s a legend. Made up by her enemies, Poland, to discredit her. Don’t know if you’d call it an ‘urban legend’, though- and it’s certainly not something commonly taught in school. :wink:

Hm. Let’s throw a couple out for the historians among the Teeming Millions. Here’s some I suspect may be ULs, but I have no evidence one way or the other.

How about Ben Franklin and his electrified kite? I don’t know if there’s historical evidence that he did that experiment that way or not.
Newton discovering gravity by an apple falling on his head?
The turkey and corn served at the First Thanksgiving?

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

35

Libertarian:AFAIK, the OP said nothing about the Newlywed Game or anything that appeared on it. David mentioned your name because you made several particularly cogent points in the other thread; in fact he quoted one. As a further point of fact, he quoted a question you asked, which in turn formed the impetus and backbone of the OP.

Whether Felice believes you to be misremembering the televised anal probe incident is certainly irrelevant to a more general discussion of false memory.

Melin, I’m not sure I’m understanding you correctly. You’re saying that the “puppy incident” proves nothing because it was only a minor detail that was falsely remembered?

Obviously (IMO) any memory needs a “hook”–some basis the memory is built around. In the classroom invader case, there actually was someone who came into the room. With the puppy, there was a picture of the puppy. But I don’t find it a stretch that the next experiment would be convincing people they’d seen both ears on a puppy after they’d been shown a picture of a cat or a platypus. And then the next step is merely describing the photo and creating memories of actually having seen it. And so forth . . .

Where do you draw the line between micro and macro?

-andros-

36

Damn ISP. Sorry 'bout that–my post got hung up in the bitstream for a half-hour or so.

37

Felice, thanks for the additional info on the Loftus test. I’ve read about so many of these that I can hardly remember who did what. :slight_smile:

38

No problem, David. As you can probably guess, though I don’t take your approach of professional skeptic (although I admire your work, both here and off the boards), this is one subject that I have put some effort into researching.
But I’m not Loftus, in case anybody was wondering.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

39

Believe me, I wish I were a professional skeptic. But I’m retaining my amateur status for the Skeptic Olympics. Ok, actually I just can’t find anybody to pay me to be a skeptic. :slight_smile:

40

(laugh) I’ll bet the False Memory Foundation would. Well, they should, anyway. Loftus, I understand, gets paid quite well to testify on their behalf in ‘recovered memory’ cases. Ah well. I suppose all we can do support Cecil’s crusade.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”