tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/false-memory-8026/articlesFalse memory – The Conversation2022-09-26T12:30:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1860102022-09-26T12:30:08Z2022-09-26T12:30:08ZChildren’s eyewitness testimony can be as accurate as adults’ or more so – if interviewers follow these guidelines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485996/original/file-20220921-15817-m88a16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C75%2C8213%2C5825&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers know better ways to get accurate information from child witnesses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/at-home-learning-royalty-free-image/1349504236">FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eyewitness memory has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent years, as organizations such as the Innocence Project suggest it was a key piece of information in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2011.14.3.333">as many as 75%</a> of wrongful convictions in the United States. Unfortunately, human memory doesn’t work like a video camera recording a scene, allowing you to play memories back exactly as they happened. Instead, memories must be reconstructed every time they are used, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All kinds of things can <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195837">influence this reconstruction process</a>, ranging from new information you learn after the event to simply the passage of time.</p>
<p>Adults are bad enough at providing accurate testimony, because of issues related to the reconstructive nature of memory as well as the ways memories can be influenced by new information and decay over time. Considering these limitations of human memory, how well do kids do? The reliability of child witnesses is especially important to understand given the <a href="https://calio.dspacedirect.org/handle/11212/384">large number of children</a> who become involved in the legal system every year. In cases involving child witnesses, the child’s testimony is often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/026151005X57657">the only available evidence</a>, so gaining reliable accounts may be the only way to keep dangerous offenders off the streets.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-lZihQgAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a psychology lecturer</a> at Clemson University <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/ben-f-cotterill/research?authuser=0">who researches children’s eyewitness memory</a>. In my new book “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10382-7">Are Children Reliable Witnesses?</a>” I explore what can influence the accuracy of children’s testimonies, for better or worse. Research shows that children can be reliable witnesses, but it depends on both the individual child and the situation.</p>
<h2>Getting child witnesses to tell their stories</h2>
<p>Typically, police begin a forensic interview by asking witnesses, including children, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1489">to freely recall</a> everything they remember about the event. During this stage of the interview, even young children can be just as accurate as adults, but they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773291">often miss many details</a>.</p>
<p>To elicit the most information possible, police will often then start asking different types of questions. Open-ended questions – for example, “Tell me more about what happened” – generate more accurate and coherent responses <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030913">than any other type</a>.</p>
<p>Questions that include an option – like “Was he tall?” – can increase the amount of information a witness provides but often lead children to answer questions they actually don’t know the answer to. The overall accuracy of their recollections typically declines when kids are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/0261510041552710">given these kinds of questions</a>.</p>
<p>If investigators struggle to gain information from young children, they may resort to leading questions that suggest details the child has not already mentioned, such as asking about touching when the child has not brought up physical contact. Often, young children will comply with the suggestion of the interviewer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030913">even if it is untrue</a>. They may then <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.2000.2610">incorporate that misinformation into their subsequent accounts</a> of the crime.</p>
<p>Sticking to a structured interview format makes investigators less likely to fall back on questions that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1489">suggestive or pose limited options</a>.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.nichd.nih.gov">National Institute of Child Health and Human Development</a> provides one <a href="https://nichdprotocol.com/">evidence-based protocol</a> investigators can follow when working with young witnesses. It takes away some of the guesswork on the part of the investigator and ensures open-ended prompts are used before reverting to more focused questions. It also guides investigators to include practice interviews and rapport-building, both of which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773291">improve interview performance</a>, increasing the quality and quantity of information provided.</p>
<p>However, interviewers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000039">need regular training workshops</a> to maintain best practices.</p>
<h2>Setting up better lineup procedures</h2>
<p>After a child eyewitness has described an alleged perpetrator to the authorities, the child may be asked to look through a photo lineup. Usually, the lineup contains someone the police consider to be a suspect along with several people the police know to be innocent.</p>
<p>Lab research suggests that children as young as 6 can be just as accurate as adults when presented with a lineup that contains the alleged perpetrator, typically scoring accuracy rates of <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-08273-006">at least 60%</a>. However, when shown a lineup that doesn’t include the target, children are significantly more likely than adults to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2013.793334">make a false identification</a>. Researchers suspect children <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-011-9089-8">feel pressured into making a selection</a> and are less aware of the potential consequences of false identifications.</p>
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<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1511">One method</a> that works to reduce false identification rates is to add an additional photo consisting of a silhouette with a question mark to the lineup. In this situation, children are told to point to the silhouette card if they do not see the target in the lineup. In multiple studies, the silhouette card reduced false identifications while <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2870">not reducing the likelihood of a witness’s making a correct identification</a> in the lineup. </p>
<h2>When children are better witnesses than adults</h2>
<p>Children are more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.2000.2610">vulnerable to external pressures</a>, such as leading questions. And their memories are more likely to be tainted by post-event misinformation. But they are less likely to have their interpretation of an event <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0043-2">influenced by assumptions</a>, previous experiences, prior knowledge or stereotypes than grown-ups are.</p>
<p>For instance, adults in research studies are more likely than children to <a href="https://www.in-mind.org/article/children-are-poor-witnesses-or-are-they">misremember that a nonviolent bank robbery involved a weapon</a>. It’s also more common for adults to misreport having read a word on a list of words centered around a particular theme. For example, if the list included the words “dream,” “pillow,” “blanket” and “bed,” then adults would be more likely than children to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0043-2">misremember “sleep” having also been on the list</a>. </p>
<p>This area of research needs further exploration, but it seems when specific information cannot be remembered, adult memories often rely upon gist information – that is, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01373.x">overall structure, but not the specific details</a> – more so than children’s do. This tendency may make <a href="https://www.in-mind.org/article/children-are-poor-witnesses-or-are-they">adults more prone to spontaneous false memories</a> than children are. However, children are still more vulnerable to externally induced false memories, like those that stem from leading questions or learning new information after the event.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, every year in the U.S. thousands of criminal cases rely on children’s testimony in order to bring charges. Understanding the wide range of factors that can affect memory in these young witnesses is of the utmost importance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Cotterill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Human memory doesn’t work like a video camera, simply recording a scene as it happens. But researchers know how to help children recall information accurately.Ben Cotterill, Lecturer in Psychology, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1565812021-03-09T07:42:26Z2021-03-09T07:42:26ZEvidence shows mental illness isn’t a reason to doubt women survivors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388399/original/file-20210309-14-1bqyy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article discusses sexual assault, gendered violence and mental distress.</em></p>
<p>Over the past week, some <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/christian-porter-rape-claim-victims-story-falling-apart/news-story/f6f4036aa0047ec262404d649139a035">media commentary</a> on the rape allegations against federal Attorney-General Christian Porter have used the alleged victim’s <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/03/05/christian-porter-recovered-memories/">history of mental health difficulties</a> to undermine and <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/key-doubts-over-porter-accusers-story/news-story/e6e68bba4ada28e5257968f25781e48b">raise questions</a> about the truth of her claims. </p>
<p>Christian Porter denies the allegations, and he has a right to the presumption of innocence.</p>
<p>What’s not acceptable is the use of a woman’s struggles with mental health to discredit her account of an alleged sexual assault.</p>
<p>This is because exposure to trauma is one of the most significant <a href="https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/jpn/2017-10-55-10/%7Bf38b3bb3-6526-4c6a-acf6-85bcd5885b12%7D/trauma-informed-care-and-practice-practice-improvement-strategies-in-an-inpatient-mental-health-ward?_id=F38B3BB365264C6AACF685BCD5885B12&_z=z">predictors</a> a person will seek support from mental health services. Gendered violence and mental distress often go hand in hand.</p>
<h2>The links between gendered violence and mental health</h2>
<p>Research, including <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gendered-Violence-Abuse-and-Mental-Health-in-Everyday-Lives-Beyond-Trauma/Moulding/p/book/9780415739450">our own</a> <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/dysfunctional-responsible-emma-tseris/10.4324/9781315107820-5?context=ubx&refId=9c655b0f-7070-4d94-a3c8-3fa2d21d131c">findings</a>, reveals many women survivors demonstrate resilience after violence and abuse. </p>
<p>However, others report struggling with mental health and seek support for feelings of shame, fear, sadness, flashbacks, panic attacks, low self-worth and other painful experiences.</p>
<p>The mental distress associated with gendered violence is often <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-sexual-politics-of-gendered-violence-and-womens-citizenship">made worse</a> by disappointing system responses, victim-blaming, and other negative social impacts such as difficulties gaining and maintaining employment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/im-a-sexual-assault-counsellor-heres-why-its-so-hard-for-survivors-to-come-forward-and-what-happens-when-they-do-156038">I'm a sexual assault counsellor. Here's why it's so hard for survivors to come forward, and what happens when they do</a>
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<h2>Mental illness stereotypes</h2>
<p>There’s a pervasive idea that accounts from people with a mental illness are unreliable. Long-standing <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-05245-003">stereotypes</a> link mental illness with unpredictability and untrustworthiness.</p>
<p>These stereotypes are more marked for women because of similarly long-standing historical tropes that connect femininity with <a href="https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1972.tb00018.x">irrationality</a>.</p>
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<p>However, undermining women’s accounts of abuse on the basis of mental illness is problematic. Research demonstrates disclosures of violence made by people accessing mental health services are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080697/">reliable</a> over long periods of time. False allegations are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%252FBF00794947">marginal</a>.</p>
<p>Women who experience mental anguish after violence are not “irrational”. Their mental distress is an <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Madness-of-Women-Myth-and-Experience/Ussher-Ussher/p/book/9780415339285">understandable response</a> to overwhelming events.</p>
<p>There’s an idea that people with certain psychiatric diagnoses are more susceptible to “false memories” of abuse than other groups. The notion of “false memory syndrome” was used in the 1990s to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160252703000815">undermine the credibility</a> of rising reports of child sexual abuse. It was largely applied to the childhood sexual abuse of girls within their families, rather than adult rape. The notion of spurious memories arising in the context of dissociative states has featured across media and social media in recent weeks, including in one widely maligned <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/03/05/christian-porter-recovered-memories/">article published by Crikey</a>.</p>
<p>While memory is complex, the idea that people with certain psychiatric diagnoses are more prone to making up reports of sexual abuse and rape is simply <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/03/08/crikey-memory-scambler-response/">not supported</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/dissociative-identity-disorder-exists-and-is-the-result-of-childhood-trauma-85076">by evidence</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dissociative-identity-disorder-exists-and-is-the-result-of-childhood-trauma-85076">Dissociative identity disorder exists and is the result of childhood trauma</a>
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<h2>Gendered violence is under-detected</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/dysfunctional-responsible-emma-tseris/10.4324/9781315107820-5">Research interviews</a> reveal many women who access mental health services never disclose their experiences of gendered violence. Often, mental health workers <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-05968-001">fail to ask</a> women about their personal histories of abuse and violence.</p>
<p>A mental health history can also act as a <a href="https://www.anrows.org.au/event/webinar-violence-against-women-and-mental-health/">barrier</a> to the disclosure of violence. This is often because women fear their diagnosis will make them unreliable witnesses in the eyes of practitioners and others in the community.</p>
<p>Women experiencing mental health difficulties report they want <a href="https://weareagenda.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Women-in-Crisis-Agenda-report-.pdf">gender-sensitive</a> mental health support. This means responding to their specific needs as women, including improving the detection of gendered violence and its impacts. Through this more holistic approach, mental health workers will be better equipped to address the root causes of women’s distress. </p>
<h2>Mental illness increases the likelihood of exposure to violence</h2>
<p>It’s particularly problematic to dismiss disclosures of gendered violence from women with mental health difficulties because this group is at significantly higher risk of violence, precisely as a consequence of reduced mental health and well-being.</p>
<p>Some domestic violence perpetrators use a woman’s psychiatric diagnosis as a <a href="https://www.anrows.org.au/event/webinar-violence-against-women-and-mental-health/">tool of abuse</a>. For example, as a form of gaslighting to reduce her sense of self-worth or to convince her she won’t be believed if she discloses the abuse. </p>
<p>Recent research has also revealed sexual harassment and assault is experienced by women within mental health inpatient <a href="https://20ian81kynqg38bl3l3eh8bf-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ANROWS-RtPP-VAW-in-mental-health-units.pdf">units</a>.</p>
<h2>What should be done?</h2>
<p>Rates of reporting gendered violence in Australia are very <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/too-many-of-us-believe-women-lie-about-rape-in-fact-they-rarely-report-it-20210305-p57889.html">low</a>. It’s important prejudicial ideas about mental illness are not mobilised against women to further prevent their disclosures from being heard and taken seriously. </p>
<p>When the media uses a woman’s mental health history to cast doubt on her allegations, other women will be deterred from speaking out about their experiences.</p>
<p>Women with mental health difficulties who disclose violence should be provided with options and resources. Their disclosures should be taken seriously, their feelings should be validated and supported, and they should be presented with a range of pathways for support and justice.</p>
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<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, please call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Tseris receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Moulding receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Women who experience mental anguish after violence are not ‘irrational’.Emma Tseris, Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Policy Studies, University of SydneyNicole Moulding, Professor of Social Work and Director, Safe Relationships and Communities Research Group, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1308562020-01-30T13:14:25Z2020-01-30T13:14:25ZHarvey Weinstein’s ‘false memory’ defense is not backed by science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312606/original/file-20200129-92977-cddbl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=547%2C37%2C1591%2C799&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harvey Weinstein leaves for the day during his trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, in New York, Jan. 28, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sexual-Misconduct-Weinstein/69f69c8e09b44f89b99423c010c2c8c6/10/0">AP Photo/Craig Ruttle</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much like the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/three-years-and-60-accusers-later-bill-cosbys-trial-begins-but-only-one-woman-will-decide-his-fate/2017/05/20/a28a2342-3ae5-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html">defense</a> of Bill Cosby, media mogul Harvey Weinstein’s defense team says they’ll <a href="https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/harvey-weinstein-recovered-memories-expert-1203374531/#!">bring up</a> “false memories” during his <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/harvey-weinstein-criminal-trial-lawsuits-settlement/">trial</a> on multiple charges of sexual assault. In short, this line of defense argues that survivors remember sexual assaults that did not happen.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F56BlwnaLvGFQwPevAvYpByUYJeZhm1gq80sVfUkJhNXjaR5_vXlk6FF64GCCIQtf_UcrPsDosJqo9qaeSg-sPCqxR5Ow&user=v5XJzfUAAAAJ">trauma</a> <a href="https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/joan_cook/">psychologists</a>, our research and experience show that false memory claims are scientifically inaccurate, damaging to survivors and unhelpful to the public. These assertions not only obscure the truth but also invalidate survivors and keep them from receiving the support they deserve.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312667/original/file-20200129-92977-rj5hi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rosanna Arquette, one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, poses for a portrait Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Weinstein-Hollywood-Accusers/5a7afe18c52d4aaf9dca5b2ba4385e67/18/0">Matt Licari/Invision/AP</a></span>
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<h2>Widespread abuse, deeply buried</h2>
<p>Over <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/judith-l-herman/trauma-and-recovery/9780465061716/">centuries</a>, women who have spoken up about surviving sexual assault have been met with claims by their perpetrators and others that their minds have failed them. They stand accused that they made up the abuse or dreamed it, that someone else implanted memories of assaults in them that never actually happened.</p>
<p>Building on this history, Weinstein’s defense team has prepared to call witnesses to <a href="https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/harvey-weinstein-recovered-memories-expert-1203374531/#!">argue</a> that women who came forward to accuse him suffer from “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-harvey-weinstein/prosecutors-oppose-testimony-on-false-memories-in-weinstein-trial-idUSKBN1XG2OV">the formation of fully false memories for events that never happened</a>.” This is not a suggestion of normal problems with memory or recall, but the unlikely proposition that his accusers somehow developed entire memories of sexual assault that never actually occurred. </p>
<p>The notion of false memories has its roots in the 1990s. At that time, a robust women’s movement had ushered in marches, <a href="http://clotheslineproject.info/project.html">clothesline projects</a> and legislation to make visible the realities of violence against women and girls. Survivors of sexual assault began talking more openly about their experiences and advocating for change. In addition, public allegations of child sexual abuse began to emerge from large institutions, such as the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126160853">Catholic Church</a>. The <a href="https://time.com/5675029/violence-against-women-act-history-biden/">Violence Against Women Act</a> was passed in 1994 and seemed to signal a new day whence people would start taking women’s stories of sexual assault seriously.</p>
<p>However, out of those seeds sparking a public accounting of sexual violence grew a contentious backlash and so-called <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/judith-l-herman/trauma-and-recovery/9780465061716/">memory war</a> about the nature of memories for traumatic events, particularly sexual abuse. </p>
<p>The strong, adverse reaction made sense in some ways. From the public’s perspective, enormous numbers of survivors, mostly women, were coming forward to say they had been abused and harmed. Revelations that sexual abuse and sexual assault were more common than previously thought would likely have challenged people’s <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1992-97250-000">assumptions</a> that we live in a just and kind world. Today we know that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.12.026">one in four</a> girls in the U.S. is sexually abused. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1295014">One in five</a> young women is sexually assaulted on campus. Society’s aggressive pushback against these realities stemmed from what we psychologists call an “<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-23182-001">institutionalization of disbelief</a>.”</p>
<h2>‘She would’ve called the police’</h2>
<p>Early in the memory war, claims of false memories tended to focus on cases where (mostly) women went years without disclosing their sexual assaults. Some women may not have remembered the assault for a period of time, while <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618797106">others</a> might not have thought or talked about it for years. </p>
<p>A dangerous set of flawed assumptions arose back then that <a href="https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/articles/cf07.pdf">echo today</a>. Things like, if sexual assault really happened, the victims would never forget it. Or, if it was rape, women would have called the police. Therefore, women who did not fully remember or disclose immediately must have false memories, the thinking went.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jennifer Freyd, pioneer in research on betrayal trauma, explains her research.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1996, pioneering psychologist Jennifer Freyd introduced the concept of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215336.Betrayal_Trauma">betrayal trauma</a>. She made plain how forgetting, not thinking about and even mis-remembering an assault may be necessary and adaptive for some survivors. She argued that the way in which traumatic events, like sexual violence, are processed and remembered <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618797106">depends on how much betrayal there is</a>. Betrayal happens when the victim depends on the abuser, such as a <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/betrayalbook/">parent, spouse or boss</a>. The victim has to adapt day-to-day because they are (or feel) stuck in that relationship. One way that victims can survive is by thinking or remembering less about the abuse or telling themselves it wasn’t abuse.</p>
<p>Since 1996, compelling scientific evidence has shown a strong relationship <a href="https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/articles/fdz.pdf">between amnesia and victims’ dependence on abusers</a>. Psychologists and other scientists have also learned much about the nature of memory, including memory for traumas like sexual assault. What gets into memory and later remembered is affected by a host of factors, including characteristics of the person and the situation. For example, some individuals dissociate during or after traumatic events. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.08.006">Dissociation</a> offers a way to escape the inescapable, such that people feel as if they have detached from their bodies or the environment. It is not surprising to us that dissociation is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.07.017">linked with incomplete memories</a>.</p>
<p>Memory can also be affected by what other people do and say. For example, researchers recently looked at what happened when they told participants not to think about some words that they had just studied. Following that instruction, those who had histories of trauma <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000461.supp">suppressed more memories than their peers did</a>.</p>
<p>Attempts to create so-called false memories in laboratory studies generally only succeed in getting people to make mistakes about details. That is, people can be easily tricked into thinking that a word was on a list they studied earlier – even if it wasn’t – if they saw similar words. However, people are quite resistant to believing that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618797106">whole, implausible</a> events happened when they did not, such as having a childhood enema.</p>
<h2>Memory often misunderstood</h2>
<p>Researchers have also learned that some of people’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000610">instincts about memory</a> warrant examination. For example, judges and juries might worry that alcohol use leads to more memory error or even false memories. However, <a href="https://www.heatherflowe.com/post/rethinking-the-effects-of-alcohol-on-eyewitness-memory-accuracy-a-meta-analysis-of-the-literature">a recent meta-analysis</a> of 10 studies with more than 1,000 participants shows otherwise. More alcohol consumption at the time that participants witnessed an event led to recalling fewer details, but not more memory errors.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2007.00327.x">People have also worried</a> that memories that were unavailable are inaccurate when later remembered. However, going days or months or years without recalling information <a href="https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/articles/bttnebraska2012.pdf">doesn’t mean the memories are false</a> when they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02102893">are finally remembered</a>. In fact, there is much evidence that <a href="http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/">long-inaccessible memories are accurate</a>.</p>
<p>As the Weinstein trial continues, it is important to remember that claims of false memory are a demeaning and dangerous distraction that have long been used to deny the realities of violence against women. Science can guide society in general, and a jury in particular, to thoughtfully evaluate survivors’ – and offenders’ – descriptions of their memories for sexual assault.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne P. DePrince has received funding from the Department of Justice, National Institutes of Health, State of Colorado, City of Denver, Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab. She has received honoraria for giving presentations and has been paid as a consultant for some organizations. She is an Advisory Group Member of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Institutional Courage.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan M. Cook Ph.D. has served as the principal investigator on seven federally-funded grants, four from the National Institute of Mental Health, one from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and two (one is current) from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.</span></em></p>As women began to come forward with experiences of rape and abuse, backlash came forward too. The notion of ‘false memory’ developed to explain away assault. Here’s why that notion itself is untrue.Anne P. DePrince, Professor of Psychology, University of DenverJoan M. Cook, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279032019-12-04T13:27:31Z2019-12-04T13:27:31Z‘The Mandela Effect’ is the perfect film for our age of distrust and doubt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305035/original/file-20191203-67007-106zvki.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some are convinced that details from the past are being warped.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Periscope Entertainment</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You’ve likely used the internet to help you remember something, like a quote from a movie, only to discover the answer differed from what you had anticipated. Maybe you shrugged, telling yourself your memory was faulty, and went on with your life.</p>
<p>But what if you found thousands of people online had this same experience about this same movie quote – and misremembered it in exactly the same way?</p>
<p>Could all these people be wrong? What if their memories were actually correct, and someone – or something – had slightly altered the past?</p>
<p>That’s the theme of the new film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6544220/">The Mandela Effect</a>.” The movie’s title refers to a real internet phenomenon – some might call it a conspiracy theory – that has become increasingly popular over the past few years.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘The Mandela Effect.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those who believe in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mandela-effect-and-how-your-mind-is-playing-tricks-on-you-89544">the Mandela Effect</a> are convinced that small details from the past are being altered.</p>
<p>As a scholar of religion, I see <a href="http://correspondencesjournal.com/ojs/ojs/index.php/home/article/view/70">the growing interest in the Mandela Effect</a> as one offshoot of a larger trend in conspiratorial and alternative thinking. But it also signals a change in the way people are experiencing history and a general distrust of the collective historical narrative.</p>
<h2>The origin story</h2>
<p>The phrase appears to have been coined around 2009 by a paranormal researcher named Fiona Broome.</p>
<p><a href="https://mandelaeffect.com/">On her website</a>, Broome explained how, during a science fiction and fantasy convention, someone mentioned to her that former South African president Nelson Mandela was still alive. And yet Broome was convinced that he had died in prison in the 1990s. She even remembered watching his funeral on TV. Of course, Nelson Mandela was very much alive at the time.</p>
<p>During the convention, she probed others about commonly misremembered historical details. The phrase “the Mandela Effect” was born.</p>
<p>The Mandela Effect caught my attention in 2012 after I read a <a href="http://www.woodbetween.world/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-we-are-living-in.html">blog post</a> about one of the better-known examples of it: the spelling of the popular children’s book series “<a href="https://www.berenstainbears.com">The Berenstain Bears</a>.”</p>
<p>The blogger, “Reece,” was convinced it had always been spelled “Berenstein.” To explain the change, the post floated the idea that our reality had been altered. According to Reece, in the past, the name actually had ended with “–ein.” But in this new reality, it had always been “–ain.” The blog concluded by proposing that we are living in a parallel universe.</p>
<p>Before Reece wrote this post, the spellings were already being discussed on the online message board 4chan, and many others also remembered it as “Berenstein.” As the idea migrated to YouTube, it took off, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3l8idr9QFE&t=74s">with one video</a> garnering almost 10 million views.</p>
<h2>If you build it…he will come?</h2>
<p>Since then, hundreds of examples of the Mandela Effect have been documented. People are convinced that Darth Vader’s quote from “The Empire Strikes Back” – “No, I am your father” – was originally “Luke, I am your father.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mwtaM0GC-js?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘No, I am your father’ or ‘Luke, I am your father’?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some claim that in “Field of Dreams,” the line “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ay5GqJwHF8">If you build it, he will come</a>” was changed from “If you build it, they will come.” And they’re certain that the Queen’s famous quote from “Snow White” – “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br0DCEEBplY">Magic mirror on the wall</a>” – was, at one point, “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” </p>
<p>It isn’t just movie quotes. Proponents of the Mandela Effect are convinced that “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2018/06/05/sex-and-city-20th-anniversary-shoes-sarah-jessica-parker-hbo/657133002/">Sex and the City</a>” was once actually titled “Sex in the City.” They also claim logos and product names, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z03gKig0SI">Ford</a> to <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherhudspeth/crazy-examples-of-the-mandela-effect-that-will-make-you-ques">Froot Loops</a>, have changed, and that <a href="http://www.saic.edu/150/man-behind-monopoly-man">Rich Uncle Pennybags</a> from Monopoly once wore a monocle but now no longer does. </p>
<p>Among adherents, several explanations for this phenomenon have emerged. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gaia.com/article/the-mandela-effect-cern-and-hidden-parallel-universes">Some theorize</a> that the <a href="https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider">Large Hadron Collider</a> at the European Organization for Nuclear Research has been distorting the fabric of reality with its experiments, launching us into an alternative dimension. Others have interpreted it <a href="http://mandelabiblechanges.com/index.php/2017/11/25/satanic-mandela-effect-christ-will-not-defeat-satan/">through a religious lens</a>; to them, it’s a sign that the end times are imminent.</p>
<p>Cognitive scientists tend to give a more straightforward, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mandela-effect-and-how-your-mind-is-playing-tricks-on-you-89544">psychological explanation</a>: they’re examples of “schema driven errors,” which refer to distortions in the way memories are packaged and then recalled.</p>
<p>Still, the forces behind the widespread interest in this phenomenon are not fully understood. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that, over the past several years, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/opinion/astrology-occult-millennials.html">more people seem to have embraced alternative and conspiratorial ways of thinking</a>.</p>
<p>The internet has oversaturated the world with information, and it’s also radically democratized content to an extent we haven’t seen since the invention of the printing press. For this reason, people are more likely to question conventional ways of thinking – as Goethe <a href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/8236.html">once wrote</a>, “We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.”</p>
<p>But this has also created an environment for conspiracy theories to thrive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304804/original/file-20191202-67034-1eazuva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some are adamant that Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly once wore a monocle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/trafalgar-square-london-uk-2nd-april-400289581?src=8baba560-8525-40c2-ba34-112aebef70ec-1-0">John Gomez/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>History’s metanarratives are malleable</h2>
<p>Not everything about the Mandela Effect can simply be discounted as conspiracies or false collective memories.</p>
<p>For example, some proponents of the Mandela Effect claim that historical events continue to crop up that no one has heard of, for example, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWj8sv4ovvM">the explosion on Black Tom Island</a>, when German agents <a href="https://www.roanoke.com/opinion/columns_and_blogs/columns/john_long/long-terrorism-s-th-anniversary/article_4d01bca1-e61e-575c-ad64-41c592e55c63.html">blew up a munitions facility</a> in New York Harbor in 1916. They allege that details from famous historical events, such as <a href="https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/05/dimensional-rifts-and-altered-history-the-mandela-effect-and-past-events/">the JFK assassination and the Tiananmen Square protests</a>, have changed. There are even claims that new animals have emerged out of thin air, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSbz-BnKHt0">like the dumbo octopus and coconut crab</a>. </p>
<p>In such cases, people are actually confronting something that historians have long grappled with – namely, an understanding that the historical narrative is, in part, a human construct, not an objective reality. There tend to be gaping holes and inconsistencies in the way history and science are formed, taught, learned, and understood.</p>
<p>The expression “<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/history-is-written-by-the-victors-quote-origin.html">history is written by the winners</a>” highlights this issue, as does French writer Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle’s 1758 description of history as “<a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/05/fable/">une fable convenue</a>,” or “a fable agreed upon.”</p>
<p>Accounts of the past – just like memories – are recreated, usually from a sparse number of available facts and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative">often with politically or intellectually biased motives</a>.</p>
<p>Most people typically don’t concern themselves with the question of whether history is real. Yet they go through life with assumptions narrated by the powers that be, whether it’s a cultural trope like <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/22/news/economy/stiglitz-american-dream/index.html">the American dream</a> or the idea that capitalism arose through a natural progression of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/historic-phases-of-capitalism-3026093">mercantile economics</a>, rationalization and <a href="https://www.cato.org/policy-report/januaryfebruary-2005/capitalism-human-nature">human nature</a>.</p>
<p>Such metanarratives are manifest; all contain an element of truth. But all are human creations, and because they have been created, they can be changed. </p>
<p>In the movie “The Mandela Effect,” the main character descends into a world where nothing can be trusted and reality is constantly in flux. </p>
<p>As we plunge toward an unknown future that feels increasingly unstable, it’s a fitting parable for our time. Questioning the shared understanding of reality and history might provoke instability. But it may also induce answers to questions we never thought to ask.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Real-life adherents to the Mandela Effect veer into conspiratorial thinking. But they do hit on an important truth: Our understanding of history is malleable.Aaron French, PhD Candidate in the Study of Religion, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1189702019-06-19T16:17:50Z2019-06-19T16:17:50ZDon’t believe everything psychologists tell you about memory<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279976/original/file-20190618-118530-1bqcg7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-acting-witness-pointing-out-someone-12686671?studio=1">Junial Enterprises/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past couple of decades, there has been an explosion of research into “false memories”, showing that our <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science%20/memories-unreliable-science-brain-false-memory-remembering-a8687296.html">memory can be subtly altered</a> by a variety of internal and external factors. Many psychologists think the public is unaware of this and that people generally think memory is much more accurate than the evidence shows.</p>
<p>Of course it’s common sense to point out that memory can sometimes be in error. It has been shown in countless studies that memory is selective and we can sometimes believe strongly in something that never happened. But is it true that people hugely overestimate their memory? And do psychologists who argue this have science on their side? </p>
<p>One very popular claim among those who think the public have a bad understanding of memory is that as many as one in two people <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/truth-about-memories-jarrett">believe memory works like a video camera</a>, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later. </p>
<p>But these claims are based on answers to a single survey question. We have known for a long time that questions phrased in the positive are often answered differently to the same question phrased in the negative. In our new survey, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxge0000610">published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology</a>, people were much more likely to agree with the opposite statement, which was: “Human memory is not like a video camera because we cannot play back events exactly as they happened.” These results, along with answers to other questions, make it clear that people are well aware that memory is selective and that we sometimes misremember.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279973/original/file-20190618-118530-myv1de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memory can sometimes be a bit like a sequence of photos or a video.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kyiv-ua-september-26-2017-memory-728847190?src=EnukGUS8iTS2LSW7lGH6dg-1-20&studio=1">VH-studio/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another argument made by many psychologists is that people wrongly believe that when they are confident about a memory, it means that memory is more likely to be correct – whereas some research has shown that confidence and accuracy are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2013.795974#.U2epi61_vt2">modestly related at best</a>. But these conclusions came mainly from old studies of the confidence with which eyewitnesses correctly or incorrectly identified suspects in line-ups. Newer and more sophisticated methods have found that, across 15 experiments, suspect identifications made with high confidence were, on average, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyewitness-memory-is-a-lot-more-reliable-than-you-think/?redirect=1">97% accurate</a>. </p>
<p>So it seems the sceptical psychologists have lost sight of the common sense conclusion that a confidently held memory is on average more likely to be right than one people are unsure of. What the research shows is that a memory is not guaranteed to be correct, just because it is believed strongly. There are many examples of witnesses who have confidently identified a defendant in court but have been wrong. But that doesn’t mean that confidence is generally of no, or little value. </p>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/">Innocence Project</a> in the US has identified a number of miscarriages of justice in which witnesses in court were <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-identification-reform/">very confident</a> in their identification of the suspect, which turned out to be wrong. When they were first asked to make an identification by police they had expressed a lot of uncertainty. Only later did they become confident, perhaps because of seeing a picture of the suspect in another context. This illustrates how initially <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyewitness-memory-is-a-lot-more-reliable-than-you-think/?redirect=1">their lack of confidence was a good guide to the accuracy of their identification</a>. And later, after external influences had altered their memory, their changed confidence proved to be a bad guide. Police and investigators should take note.</p>
<h2>False memory</h2>
<p>In the past 25 years, psychologists have carried out many experiments to demonstrate the fallibility of memory. Many of these studies involve finding clever ways to mislead people and trick them into misremembering. For example, using misleading questions that suggest to people they saw something that actually wasn’t there produces more wrong answers than <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-misinformation-effect-2795353">when no misleading questions are used</a>. But, however interesting the findings, it doesn’t mean memory is unreliable when people aren’t being tricked by psychologists.</p>
<p>Another thing much of the research ignores is that, when we remember, we have to balance accuracy (only describing what you’re really sure of) and completeness (describing everything you think you may remember, even if you’re not sure). In court, the emphasis is very much on accuracy – but this isn’t necessarily the case in psychology experiments where completeness is often encouraged at the expense of accuracy. This may make it problematic to generalise the results of psychology experiments to the behaviour of witnesses in the courts. </p>
<p>This matters because psychologists often try to <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun07/order">“educate” the courts</a> about memory research that is far from clear cut and even sometimes mistaken. But more importantly, the constant claims about the unreliability of memory leaking into print, broadcast and social media are creating a climate of scepticism in which witness memories may be disbelieved for no good reason. </p>
<p>For example, witnesses describing their memory as “like a video recorder” could have their evidence criticised as unreliable. Just as too much faith in memory can result in a miscarriage of justice, so too could too much scepticism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Brewin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many psychologists claim memory is unreliable.Chris Brewin, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1149212019-04-16T19:49:14Z2019-04-16T19:49:14ZHow fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269249/original/file-20190415-147511-jer55w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C0%2C5615%2C3354&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your memory can play tricks with you so best not to let fake news get through in the first place.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/shipfactory </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although the term itself is not new, fake news presents a growing threat for <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1473127/africas-fake-news-problem-is-worse-than-in-the-us/">societies across the world</a>. </p>
<p>Only a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207383" title="Information-theoretic models of deception: Modelling cooperation and diffusion in populations exposed to fake news">small amount of fake news is needed</a> to disrupt a conversation, and at extremes it can have an impact on democratic processes, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-may-owe-his-2016-victory-to-fake-news-new-study-suggests-91538">including elections</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-made-deceptive-robots-to-see-why-fake-news-spreads-and-found-a-weakness-104776">We made deceptive robots to see why fake news spreads, and found a weakness</a>
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<p>But what can we do to avoid fake news, at a time when we could be waiting a while for <a href="https://en.unesco.org/fightfakenews" title="Journalism, Fake News and Disinformation: A Handbook for Journalism Education and Training">mainstream media</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/08/fake-news-is-going-to-get-worse-unless-companies-take-action-dnc-cto.html">social networks</a> to step up and <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/24/tech/one-problem-fake-news-it-really-really-works">address the problem</a>? </p>
<p>From a psychology perspective, an important step in tackling fake news is to understand why it gets into our mind. We can do this by <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-two-people-see-the-same-thing-but-have-different-memories-104327">examining how memory works</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Distortion-Brains-Societies-Reconstruct/dp/0674566769">how memories become distorted</a>. </p>
<p>Using this viewpoint generates some tips you can use to work out whether you’re reading or sharing fake news – which might be handy in the coming election period. </p>
<h2>How memory gets distorted at the source</h2>
<p>Fake news often relies on <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200105/the-seven-sins-memory">misattribution</a> – instances in which we can retrieve things from memory but can’t remember their source.</p>
<p>Misattribution is one of the reasons advertising is so effective. We see a product and feel a pleasant sense of familiarity because we’ve encountered it before, but fail to remember that the source of the memory was an ad. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Rand2/publication/327866113_Prior_Exposure_Increases_Perceived_Accuracy_of_Fake_News/" title="Prior Exposure Increases Perceived Accuracy of Fake News">One study</a> examined headlines from fake news published during the 2016 US Presidential Election.</p>
<p>The researchers found even one presentation of a headline (such as “Donald Trump Sent His Own Plane to Transport 200 Stranded Marines”, <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trumps-marine-airlift/">based on claims shown to be false</a>) was enough to increase belief in its content. This effect persisted for at least a week, was still found when headlines were accompanied by a factcheck warning, and even when participants suspected it might be false.</p>
<p>Repeated exposure can <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/5/16410912/illusory-truth-fake-news-las-vegas-google-facebook">increase the sense that misinformation is true</a>. Repetition creates the perception of group consensus that can result in collective misremembering, a phenomenon called the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mandela-effect-and-how-your-mind-is-playing-tricks-on-you-89544">Mandela Effect</a>.</p>
<p>It might be harmless when people collectively misremember something fun, such as a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherhudspeth/crazy-examples-of-the-mandela-effect-that-will-make-you-ques">childhood cartoon (did the Queen in Disney’s Snow White really NOT say “Mirror, mirror…”?)</a>. But it has serious consequences when a false sense of group consensus contributes to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/the-signal/are-anti-vaxxers-having-a-moment/10957310">rising outbreaks of measles</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists have investigated whether <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3274" title="Public Attitudes on the Ethics of Deceptively Planting False Memories to Motivate Healthy Behavior">targeted misinformation can promote healthy behaviour</a>. Dubbed false-memory diets, it is said that false memories of food experiences can encourage people to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/falsememory-diet-the.html">avoid fatty foods</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3627832/" title="Queasy does it: False alcohol beliefs and memories may lead to diminished alcohol preferences">alcohol</a> and even <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25116296" title="Asparagus, a love story: healthier eating could be just a false memory away">convince them to love asparagus</a>.</p>
<p>Creative people that have a strong ability to associate different words are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Ormerod/publication/251531367_Convergent_but_not_divergent_thinking_predicts_susceptibility_to_associative_memory_illusions/" title="Convergent, but not divergent, thinking predicts susceptibility to associative memory illusions">especially susceptible to false memories</a>. Some people might be more vulnerable than others to believe fake news, but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/world/asia/pakistan-israel-khawaja-asif-fake-news-nuclear.html">everyone is at risk</a>. </p>
<h2>How bias can reinforce fake news</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200105/the-seven-sins-memory">Bias</a> is how our feelings and worldview affect the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-two-people-see-the-same-thing-but-have-different-memories-104327">encoding and retrieval of memory</a>. We might like to think of our memory as an archivist that carefully preserves events, but <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351660020/chapters/10.4324/9781315159591-4" title="New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory">sometimes it’s more like a storyteller</a>. Memories are shaped by our beliefs and can function to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/autobiographical-memory">maintain a consistent narrative rather than an accurate record</a>.</p>
<p>An example of this is selective exposure, our tendency to seek information that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797953/" title="Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-Analysis of Selective Exposure to Information">reinforces our pre-existing beliefs</a> and to avoid information that brings those beliefs into question. This effect is supported by evidence that television news audiences are <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/">overwhelmingly partisan</a> and exist in their own echo chambers. </p>
<p>It was thought that online communities exhibit the same behaviour, contributing to the spread of fake news, but this <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-the-echo-chamber-92544">appears to be a myth</a>. Political news sites are often populated by people with <a href="https://www.academia.edu/34506137/The_Myth_of_Partisan_Selective_Exposure_A_Portrait_of_the_Online_Political_News_Audience">diverse ideological backgrounds</a> and echo chambers are <a href="https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/avoiding-the-echo-chamber-about-echo-chambers-6e1f1a1a0f39">more likely to exist in real life than online</a>. </p>
<p>Our brains are wired to assume things we believe <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167203259933" title="Evolving Informational Credentials: The (Mis)Attribution of Believable Facts to Credible Sources">originated from a credible source</a>. But are we more inclined to remember information that reinforces our beliefs? <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247781236_Do_Attitudes_Affect_Memory_Tests_of_the_Congeniality_Hypothesis" title="Do Attitudes Affect Memory? Tests of the Congeniality Hypothesis">This is probably not the case</a>.</p>
<p>People who hold strong beliefs remember things that are relevant to their beliefs but they remember opposing information too. This happens because people are motivated to defend their beliefs against opposing views. </p>
<p>Belief echoes are a related phenomenon that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-correcting-donald-trump--or-anyone-else--doesnt-work/2016/01/08/9e5ef5d4-b57d-11e5-a842-0feb51d1d124_story.html?utm_term=.912e5b8e4409">highlight the difficulty of correcting misinformation</a>. Fake news is often designed to be attention-grabbing. </p>
<p>It can continue to shape people’s attitudes after it has been discredited because it produces a vivid emotional reaction and builds on our existing narratives. </p>
<p>Corrections have a much smaller emotional impact, especially if they require policy details, so should be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258180567_Misinformation_and_Its_Correction_Continued_Influence_and_Successful_Debiasing" title="Misinformation and Its Correction Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing">designed to satisfy a similar narrative urge</a> to be effective.</p>
<h2>Tips for resisting fake news</h2>
<p>The way our memory works means it might be impossible to resist fake news completely. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-kids-navigate-fake-news-and-misinformation-online-79342">How to help kids navigate fake news and misinformation online</a>
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<p>But one approach is to start <a href="https://qz.com/858887/how-to-know-if-fake-news-is-fake-learn-to-think-like-a-scientist/">thinking like a scientist</a>. This involves adopting a questioning attitude that is motivated by curiosity, and being aware of personal bias.</p>
<p>For fake news, this might involve asking ourselves the following questions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>What type of content is this?</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-born-overseas-prefer-the-online-world-for-their-news-84355">Many people rely on social media and aggregators as their main source of news</a>. By reflecting on whether information is news, opinion or even humour, this can help consolidate information more completely into memory.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Where is it published?</strong> Paying attention to where information is published is crucial for encoding the source of information into memory. If something is a big deal, a wide variety of sources will discuss it, so attending to this detail is important.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Who benefits?</strong> Reflecting on who benefits from you believing the content helps consolidate the source of that information into memory. It can also help us reflect on our own interests and whether our personal biases are at play. </p></li>
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<p>Some people <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3023545" title="Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Bullshit Receptivity, Overclaiming, Familiarity, and Analytic Thinking">tend to be more susceptible to fake news</a> because they are more accepting of weak claims. </p>
<p>But we can strive to be more reflective in our open-mindedness by paying attention to the source of information, and questioning our own knowledge if and when we are unable to remember the context of our memories.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Matthews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why is it that some ‘fake news’ gets us remembering things that are not true? It depends on how our memory works, and there are ways we can avoid being duped.Julian Matthews, Research Officer - Cognitive Neurology Lab, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1064612018-12-17T10:49:18Z2018-12-17T10:49:18ZAre memories reliable? Expert explains how they change more than we realise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250919/original/file-20181217-185258-1gc7soo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tiny mistakes can appear in our memories every time we recall past events. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-head-erased-by-pencil-eraser-1015037953?src=EnukGUS8iTS2LSW7lGH6dg-4-44">Quick Shot/ Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Your memory probably isn’t as good as you think it is. We rely on our memories not only for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938207">sharing stories</a> with friends or learning from our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938208">past experiences</a>, but we also use it for crucial things like creating a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938210">sense of personal identity</a>. Yet evidence shows that our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2013.866683">memory isn’t as consistent</a> as we’d like to believe. What’s worse, we’re often guilty of changing the facts and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-false-memories-49454">adding false details</a> to our memories without even realising. </p>
<p>To understand a bit about how remembering works, consider the <a href="https://icebreakerideas.com/telephone-game/">“telephone game”</a> (also known as “Chinese whispers”). In the game, one person quietly whispers a message to the person beside them, who then passes it on to the next person in line, and so on. Each time the message is relayed, some parts might be misheard or misunderstood, others might get innocently altered, improved, or forgotten. Over time the message can become very different from the original. </p>
<p>The same can happen to our memories. There are countless reasons why tiny mistakes or embellishments might happen each time we recall past events, ranging from what we believe is true or wish were true, to what someone else told us about the past event, or what we want that person to think. And whenever these flaws happen, they can have long-term effects on how we’ll recall that memory in the future.</p>
<p>Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we use artistic license to tell the story differently depending on who’s listening. We might ask ourselves whether it’s vital to get the facts straight, or whether we only want to make the listener laugh. And we might change the story’s details depending on the listener’s attitudes or political leaning. Research shows that when we describe our memories differently to different audiences it isn’t only the message that changes, but sometimes it’s also the memory itself. This is known as the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-13299-001">“audience-tuning effect”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">We often describe our memories differently depending on who’s listening.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-pretty-woman-telling-fascinating-story-267211376?src=vqPoURB5AUqX4ZG8bppukw-1-20">ESB Professional/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-9335.40.3.138">In one study</a> on the audience-tuning effect, participants watched a video of a bar fight. In the video, two intoxicated men get into a physical confrontation after one man has argued with his friend, and the other has seen his favourite football team lose a match. Afterwards, participants were asked to tell a stranger what they had seen.</p>
<p>The study’s participants were split into two groups. One group was told that the stranger disliked one of the two fighters in the video. The other group was told that the stranger liked this same fighter. Unsurprisingly, this extra information shaped how people described the video to the stranger. Participants gave more negative accounts of the behaviour of the fighter if they believed the stranger disliked him. </p>
<p>More importantly though, the way people told their story later affected the way they remembered the fighter’s behaviour. When participants later tried to remember the fight in a neutral, unbiased way, the two groups still gave somewhat differing accounts of what had happened, mirroring the attitude of their original audience. To an extent, these participants’ stories had become their memories.</p>
<p>Results like these show us how our memories can change spontaneously over time, as a product of how, when, and why we access them. In fact, sometimes simply the act of rehearsing a memory can be exactly what makes it susceptible to change. This is known as “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility”.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368117300724">typical study of this effect</a>, participants watched a short film, then took a memory test a few days later. But during the days between watching the film and taking the final test, two other things happened. First, half of the participants took a practice memory test. Second, all of the participants were given a description of the film to read, which contained some false details. </p>
<p>The aim of these studies was to see how many of the false details people would eventually reproduce in the final memory test. <a href="http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/12/4/361.short">Hundreds of studies already show</a> that people will unwittingly add false details like these to their memories. But these studies found something even more fascinating. Participants who took a practice memory test shortly before reading the false information were more likely to reproduce this false information in the final memory test. In this case, practice makes imperfect. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-real-you-is-a-myth-we-constantly-create-false-memories-to-achieve-the-identity-we-want-103253">The 'real you' is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want</a>
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<p>Why might this be? <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107474271630404X">One theory</a> is that rehearsing our memories of past events can temporarily make those memories malleable. In other words, retrieving a memory might be a bit like taking ice-cream out of the freezer and leaving it in direct sunlight for a while. By the time our memory goes back into the freezer, it might have naturally become a little misshapen, especially if someone has meddled with it in the meantime.</p>
<p>These findings teach us a lot about how our memories are formed and stored. And they might lead us to wonder how much our most treasured memories have changed since the very first time we remembered them.</p>
<p>Or perhaps not. After all, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2016.1214280">my research with other colleagues shows that</a> people are generally pretty unwilling to invest time and effort in checking the accuracy of their memories. But whether or not you ever actually discover any small or large changes that have occurred, it’s unlikely that your treasured memory is 100% accurate. Remembering is an act of storytelling, after all. And our memories are only ever as reliable as the most recent story we told ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even our most treasured memories can gradually change over time.Robert Nash, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1032532018-09-19T12:37:01Z2018-09-19T12:37:01ZThe ‘real you’ is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236695/original/file-20180917-158234-1ijbrhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vlasov Yevhenii/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We all want other people to “get us” and appreciate us for who we really are. In striving to achieve such relationships, we typically assume that there is a “real me”. But how do we actually know who we are? It may seem simple – we are a product of our life experiences, which we can be easily accessed through our memories of the past. </p>
<p>Indeed, substantial research <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938206?src=recsys">has shown</a> that memories shape a person’s identity. People with profound forms of amnesia typically also lose their identity – as <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1984/02/16/the-lost-mariner/">beautifully described</a> by the late writer and neurologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-oliver-sacks-romantic-science-and-a-life-now-ending-42242">Oliver Sacks</a> in his case study of 49-year-old Jimmy G, the “lost mariner”, who struggles to find meaning as he cannot remember anything that’s happened after his late adolescence.</p>
<p>But it turns out that identity is often not a truthful representation of who we are anyway – even if we have an intact memory. Research shows that we <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.621.9717&rep=rep1&type=pdf">don’t actually access</a> and use all available memories when creating personal narratives. It is becoming increasingly clear that, at any given moment, we unawarely tend to choose and pick what to remember.</p>
<p>When we create personal narratives, we rely on a psychological screening mechanism, dubbed the monitoring system, which labels certain mental concepts as memories, but not others. Concepts that are rather vivid and rich in detail and emotion – episodes we can re-experience – are more likely to be marked as memories. These then pass a “plausibility test” carried out by a similar monitoring system which tells whether the events fit within the general personal history. For example, if we remember flying unaided in vivid detail, we know straight away that it cannot be real. </p>
<p>But what is selected as a personal memory also needs to fit the current idea that we have of ourselves. Let’s suppose you have always been a very kind person, but after a very distressing experience you have developed a strong aggressive trait that now suits you. Not only has your behaviour changed, your personal narrative has too. If you are now asked to describe yourself, you might include past events previously omitted from your narrative – for example, instances in which you acted aggressively.</p>
<h2>False memories</h2>
<p>And this is only half of the story. The other half has to do with the truthfulness of the memories that each time are chosen and picked to become part of the personal narrative. Even when we correctly rely on our memories, they can be highly inaccurate or outright false: we often <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-false-memories-49454">make up memories</a> of events that never happened.</p>
<p>Remembering is not like playing a video from the past in your mind – it is a highly reconstructive process that depends on knowledge, self image, needs and goals. Indeed, brain imaging studies <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1995661/">have shown</a> that personal memory does not have just one location in the brain, it is based on an “autobiographical memory brain network” which comprises many separate areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237076/original/file-20180919-158219-1rtcb8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many parts of the brain are involved in creating personal memories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/conceptual-image-man-side-profile-showing-311949818?src=hTawT6ABsJ2No30gQrXQ8Q-1-24">Triff/shuttestock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A crucial area is the frontal lobes, which are in charge of integrating all the information received into an event that needs to be meaningful – both in the sense of lacking impossible, incongruent elements within it, but also in the sense of fitting the idea the individual remembering has of themselves. If not congruent or meaningful, the memory is either discarded or undergoes changes, with information added or deleted.</p>
<p>Memories are therefore very malleable, they can be distorted and changed easily, as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/%28SICI%291099-0720%28199904%2913%3A2%3C125%3A%3AAID-ACP560%3E3.0.CO%3B2-5">many studies in our lab have shown</a>. For example, we have found that suggestions and imagination can create memories that are very detailed and emotional while <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12661683">still completely false</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget">Jean Piaget</a>, a famous developmental psychologist, remembered all his life in vivid detail an event in which he was abducted with his nanny – she often told him about it. After many years, she confessed to having made the story up. At that point, Piaget stopped believing in the memory, but it nevertheless remained as vivid as it was before.</p>
<h2>Memory manipulation</h2>
<p>We have assessed the frequency and nature of these false and no-longer-believed memories in a series of studies. Examining a very large sample across several countries, we discovered that they <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20689053">are actually rather common</a>. What’s more, as for Piaget, they all feel very much like real memories. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032998">remained true</a> even when we successfully created false memories in the lab using doctored videos suggesting that participants had performed certain actions. We later told them that these memories never actually happened. At this point, the participants stopped believing in the memory but reported that the characteristics of it made them feel as if it were true.</p>
<p>A common source of false memories are photos from the past. In a new study, we have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20445911.2018.1426588">discovered</a> that we are particularly likely to create false memories when we see an image of someone who is just about to perform an action. That’s because such scenes trigger our minds to imagine the action being carried out over time.</p>
<p>But is all this a bad thing? For a number of years, researchers have focused on the negatives of this process. For example, there are fears that therapy could create <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277840/False-memories-fears-controversial-techniques-used-charity-supporting-Watson-s-abuse-victims.html">false memories of historical sexual abuse</a>, leading to false accusations. There have also been heated discussions about how people who suffer from mental health problems – for example, depression – can be <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292784/">biased to remember</a> very negative events. Some self-help books therefore make suggestions about how to obtain a more accurate sense of self. For example, we could reflect on our biases and get feedback from others. But it is important to remember that other people may have false memories about us, too.</p>
<p>Crucially, there are upsides to our malleable memory. Picking and choosing memories is actually the norm, guided by self-enhancing biases that lead us to rewrite our past so it resembles what we feel and believe now. Inaccurate memories and narratives are necessary, resulting from the need to maintain a positive, up-to-date sense of self.</p>
<p>My own personal narrative is that I am a person who has always loved science, who has lived in many countries and met many people. But I might have made it up, at least in part. My current enjoyment for my job, and frequent travels, might taint my memories. Ultimately, there may have been times when I didn’t love science and wanted to settle down permanently. But clearly it doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is that I am happy and know what I want now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giuliana Mazzoni receives funding from ESRC, British Academy, Canadian SSHRC, Leverhulme Trust, Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>Research sheds light on how we pick and choose among distorted memories to create our identity. But is that a bad thing?Giuliana Mazzoni, Professor of Psychology, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/764302017-04-20T10:17:44Z2017-04-20T10:17:44ZAnthill 12: Don’t remember this<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165903/original/file-20170419-2414-1buqd2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill</a> podcast we delve into the world of memory. We talk to psychologists, historians and political scientists about how and why we remember some things and forget others. </p>
<p>First up, our science editor, Miriam Frankel, finds out why people are susceptible to remembering things that didn’t actually happen to them. Psychologists Martin Conway, a professor at City University, and Sue Sherman, a senior lecturer at Keele University, describe some of the many experiments that have been done to implant false memories into people’s brains. This may explain why one The Conversation editor has a memory of being born (which also features on the podcast). </p>
<p>While it may not matter so much if your memories of childhood are a bit hazy, the phenomenon of false memories poses significant problems for the criminal justice system. In fact, common misunderstandings of the nature of memories can be detrimental to the way that crime is investigated and judged. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165921/original/file-20170419-2398-ler5kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judgements can hinge on false memories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From memories of things that didn’t actually happen, we turn to the act of deliberate forgetting. The Anthill producer, Gemma Ware, takes a look at the politics of history teaching. She speaks with historian Sean Lang from Anglia Ruskin University about the different ways that governments attempt to whitewash their past. </p>
<p>As well as posing problems for students, the way that curricula are written can also lead to diplomatic spats. Take Japan’s beef with its neighbours over the way that various details of World War II are taught. Taku Tamaki, lecturer in international relations at Loughborough University, explains the controversy over “comfort women” – and why it is an enduring flashpoint in Japan’s relations with South Korea especially. </p>
<p>Lastly, we ponder the effect of social media and the ubiquity of smartphones on the public figures of the future. Now that much of our stupid behaviour and opinions get recorded, will this lead to a world where public figures have to be squeaky clean? Or will we learn to accept that most young people do things that they go on to regret? To investigate, Will de Freitas spoke to Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, a professor at Cardiff University’s school of journalism, media and cultural studies. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Click here to listen to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">more episodes of The Anthill</a>, on themes including <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-10-the-future-73404">The Future</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-7-on-belief-69448">Beliefs</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-9-when-scientists-experiment-on-themselves-71852">Self-experimentation</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Anthill theme music is by <a href="https://www.melodyloops.com/search/How+to+Steal+a+Million+Dollars/">Alex Grey for Melody Loops</a>. Music in the false memories section is <a href="https://incompetech.com/wordpress/2015/01/anamalie/">Anamalie by Kevin MacLeod</a> and music in the history textbooks section is by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHj9EhZorLo">Drone D, by Kevin McLeod</a>. The news clip about David Cameron is from the BBC, the clip about South Korea and Japan’s fallout over comfort women is from France24, the clip of Empire Day is from the Great British Archive and the clip of Barack Obama is from MSNBC.</em> </p>
<p><em>A big thanks to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This episode of The Anthill podcast delves into the world of memory. We talk to psychologists, historians and political scientists about how and why we remember some things and forget others.Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, UK editionAnnabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioMiriam Frankel, Senior Science EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760312017-04-18T12:24:33Z2017-04-18T12:24:33ZThe Sense of an Ending – and why we are wired to produce false memories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165303/original/image-20170413-25894-1gi7mqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How much do you trust your memories? Do you consider the events and perspectives you remember as gospel truth, or as more malleable, fickle things that bend and warp with time and shifting context?</p>
<p>The recently released film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4827986/">The Sense of an Ending</a>, adapted from Julian Barnes’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/26/sense-ending-julian-barnes-review1">Booker-winning novel</a>, takes the second perspective. It explores the intriguing premise that our own views of our lives may be incomplete and even inaccurate. I research false memories, and so I was curious to see how the film matched up to my own understanding of how our views of our pasts do not always reflect what actually happened.</p>
<p>Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent) is a grumpy retiree who owns a camera repair shop in modern day London. One morning he receives a letter explaining that he has been left the diary of his closest friend from school, Adrian, who committed suicide when they were at university. The diary has been left to him by the mother of Tony’s first college girlfriend, Veronica (Charlotte Rampling). Tony never gets to read the diary because Veronica refuses to give it up. But the bequest causes him to reconnect with Veronica, and as he speaks to her, he starts to reconsider his vision of their past.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165304/original/image-20170413-25882-ak8eut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The young Adrian (Joe Alwyn) and Tony (Billy Howle).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although we do not know what Tony believes led to his friend’s suicide, as the story unfolds it becomes clear that he is very much unaware of the repercussions of an explosively emotional letter he had sent to Adrian years ago. Indeed, we watch as Tony uncovers a complex and disturbing truth in his search for the true narrative of what led to his best friend’s untimely death.</p>
<p>Tony’s misapprehension centres around a false memory he has concerning the letter he sent to Adrian. As Tony recounts it, the letter gave his blessing to the new relationship between Adrian and ex-girlfriend, Veronica. But he slowly learns that the letter he wrote was instead a slur to his friend’s betrayal for engaging in a relationship with Veronica after their own break up. The letter, it transpires, led to a series of events that ended in Adrian’s suicide.</p>
<h2>False memories</h2>
<p>So Tony has a distorted view of his life and history. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183109/">Extensive research</a> in the field of memory distortion has shown that memories do indeed tend to alter, fade, and undergo transformation over the course of time. </p>
<p>We all have our own narratives of life. You have a “version” of that life that is a story you tell to yourself and others, about what your life has been. But it is only that, a story, and it is just one version of a possible number of stories. Tony realises that the version of his life that he has told himself is based on a recollection of an event that is inherently wrong. He comes to realise that the distortion of memory can change anything and everything that he had believed true for so long.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165307/original/image-20170413-25859-eizgnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The young Tony and Veronica (Freya Mavor).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tony’s mistakes are the mistakes of a fallible memory system. Fallible not just because we forget information (errors of omission) but because we also “remember” things that did not happen (errors of commission). This can be a simple case of misremembering, for example, that we had eggs for breakfast when in fact we had cereal, or sometimes, more seriously, mistakenly remembering entire events that never happened. </p>
<p>Memory distortions in humans may occur simply with the passage of time. This is partly because, over time, memories typically become less episodic (highly detailed and specific) and more semantic (more broad and generalised), as the information is repeatedly retrieved and re-encoded in varying contexts. </p>
<h2>Bone chips and dinosaurs</h2>
<p>We do this not because memory is fundamentally flawed but because <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183109/">it is reconstructive</a>. That is, our memory of events is not a verbatim playback of what happened. Rather, it’s a reconstruction based on the retrieval of some stored remnants of the original experience that may have persisted in memory, along with our conceptual framework for other similar previous experiences, that serves to make the memory coherent.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/remembering-the-father-of-cognitive-psychology#.WPXACFPytP0">Ulric Neisser</a>, the “father of cognitive psychology”, famously likened memory retrieval to palaeontology, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Cognitive_Psychology.html?id=WSGcBQAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">writing in 1967</a>: “Out of a few stored bone chips, we remember a dinosaur.” Put simply, if we think an event should have happened in a certain way on the basis of our previous experiences, we are likely to think that the event did indeed happen this way. So memory is not simply a recording of the past. It is a deliberate piecing together of retrieved information in an effort to make sense of the past. And so efforts to recollect memories can turn out to be fatal if the recollected memories prove fallible.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8TbmL_iQbxA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But why is memory like this? Such a reconstructive memory system is designed to be very adaptive. It is likely that memory evolved not as a system that retains verbatim information about past experience but rather one that helps us understand, experience, and interpret the world around us. It works well for what it is intended: guiding current and future behaviour.</p>
<p>This latter point is an important one to understand when it comes to Tony. His false narration of this historical event has likely protected him from facing possible blame for his friend’s suicide. We can avoid thinking about events that may be seen as traumatic to the self, and we can direct our attention to other competing thoughts to suppress the memory for the event. A faulty or false memory has led Tony’s individual history and narrative to be imperfect. The Sense of an Ending demonstrates that when the self is constructed from memories, the self can be a false self, based on beliefs and memories that do not accurately represent the past.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that we should all consider our life narratives as inherently false, based on a faulty memory system. But because of the constructive nature of memory, we should consider that what we end up remembering is not always what we actually witnessed happening.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Knott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What you end up remembering isn’t always what you have witnessed.Lauren Knott, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/724692017-03-02T01:39:16Z2017-03-02T01:39:16Z‘Alternative facts’: A psychiatrist’s guide to twisted relationships to truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158963/original/image-20170301-5494-ru9aai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2038%2C1512&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Does your nose grow if it's a falsehood, not a lie?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/5477733246">Thomas Hawk</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The phrase “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/">alternative facts</a>” has recently made the news in a political context, but psychiatrists like me are already intimately acquainted with the concept – indeed, we hear various forms of alternate reality expressed almost every day. </p>
<p>All of us need to parse perceived from actual reality every day, in nearly every aspect of our lives. So how can we sort out claims and beliefs that strike most people as odd, unfounded, fantastical or just plain delusional?</p>
<h2>Untruths aren’t always lies</h2>
<p>First, we need to make a distinction often emphasized by ethicists and philosophers: that between a lie and a falsehood. Thus, someone who <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/#TraDefLyi">deliberately misrepresents what he or she knows to be true</a> is lying – typically, to secure some personal advantage. In contrast, someone who voices a mistaken claim without any intent to deceive is not lying. That person may simply be unaware of the facts, or may refuse to believe the best available evidence. Rather than lying, he’s stating a falsehood. </p>
<p>Some people who voice falsehoods appear incapable of distinguishing real from unreal, or truth from fiction, yet are sincerely convinced their worldview is absolutely correct. And this is our entree into the psychiatric literature.</p>
<p>In clinical psychiatry, we see patients with a broad spectrum of ideas that many people would find eccentric, exaggerated or blatantly at odds with reality. The clinician’s job is, first, to listen empathically and try to understand these beliefs from the patient’s point of view, carefully taking into account the person’s cultural, ethnic and religious background.</p>
<p>Sometimes, clinicians can be wildly mistaken in their first impressions. A colleague of mine once described a severely agitated patient who was hospitalized because he insisted he was being stalked and harassed by the FBI. A few days into his hospitalization, FBI agents showed up on the unit to arrest the patient. As the old joke goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you!</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159026/original/image-20170301-5540-1ka8qw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As strongly as she believes, it doesn’t make it true.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-telling-her-friends-story-207125380">Talking image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When what you believe is wrong</h2>
<p>We can think of distortions of reality as falling along a continuum, ranging from mild to severe, based on how rigidly the belief is held and how impervious it is to factual information. On the milder end, we have <a href="http://professionaltrainingresourcesinc.com/wp-content/uploads/Paranoid-Delusions-vs-Paranoid-Ideas-vs-Overvalued-Ideas.pdf">what psychiatrists call over-valued ideas</a>. These are very strongly held convictions that are at odds with what most people in the person’s culture believe, but which are not bizarre, incomprehensible or patently impossible. A passionately held belief that vaccinations cause autism might qualify as an over-valued idea: it’s not scientifically correct, but it’s not utterly beyond the realm of possibility.</p>
<p>On the <a href="http://doi.org/10.4103/0972-6748.57851">severe end of the continuum are delusions</a>. These are strongly held, completely inflexible beliefs that are not altered at all by factual information, and which are clearly false or impossible. Importantly, delusions are not explained by the person’s culture, religious beliefs or ethnicity. A patient who inflexibly believes that Vladimir Putin has personally implanted an electrode in his brain in order to control his thoughts would qualify as delusional. When the patient expresses this belief, he or she is not lying or trying to deceive the listener. It is a sincerely held belief, but still a falsehood.</p>
<p>Falsehoods of various kinds can be voiced by people with various neuropsychiatric disorders, but also by those who are perfectly “normal.” Within the range of normal falsehood are so-called <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1010709">false memories</a>, which many of us experience quite often. For example, you are absolutely certain you sent that check to the power company, but in fact, you never did.</p>
<p>As social scientist Julia Shaw observes, false memories “<a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/how-false-memory-changes-what-happened-yesterday/">have the same properties as any other memories</a>, and are indistinguishable from memories of events that actually happened.” So when you insist to your spouse, “Of course I paid that electric bill!” you’re not lying – you are merely deceived by your own brain.</p>
<p>A much more serious type of false memory involves a <a href="http://www.memorylossonline.com/glossary/confabulation.html">process called confabulation</a>: the spontaneous production of false memories, often of a very detailed nature. Some confabulated memories are mundane; others, quite bizarre. For example, the person may insist – and sincerely believe – that he had eggs Benedict at the Ritz for breakfast, even though this clearly wasn’t the case. Or, the person may insist she was abducted by terrorists and present a fairly elaborate account of the (fictional) ordeal. <a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/cognitive-disorders/confabulation-bridge-between-neurology-and-psychiatry">Confabulation</a> is usually seen in the context of severe brain damage, such as may follow a stroke or the rupture of a blood vessel in the brain.</p>
<h2>Lying as a default</h2>
<p>Finally, there is falsification that many people would call pathological lying, and which goes by the extravagant scientific name of pseudologia fantastica (PF). Writing in the Psychiatric Annals, Drs. Rama Rao Gogeneni and Thomas Newmark <a href="http://doi.org/10.3928/00485713-20141003-02">list the following features of PF</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>A marked tendency to lie, often as a defensive attempt to avoid consequences. The person may experience a “high” from this imaginative story-telling.</li>
<li>The lies are quite dazzling or fantastical, though they may contain truthful elements. Often, the lies may capture considerable public attention.</li>
<li>The lies tend to present the person in a positive light, and may be an expression of an underlying character trait, such as pathological narcissism. However, the lies in PF usually go beyond the more “believable” stories of persons with narcissistic traits.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although the precise cause or causes of PF are not known, some data suggest <a href="http://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.106.025056">abnormalities in the white matter of the brain</a> – bundles of nerve fibers surrounded by an insulating sheath called myelin. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch argued that <a href="http://search.proquest.com/openview/8c8791514f5a1ecfa6e4a5c1013372c9/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1820984">PF stems from psychological factors</a>, such as the need to enhance one’s self-esteem, secure the admiration of others or to portray oneself as either a hero or a victim.</p>
<h2>Who cares about facts anyway?</h2>
<p>Of course, all of this presumes something like a consensus on what constitutes “reality” and “facts” and that most people have an interest in establishing the truth. But this presumption is looking increasingly doubtful, in the midst of what has come to be known as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-post-truth-election-clicks-trump-facts-67274">post-truth era</a>.” Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, described ours as a period in which “up is down and down is up and everything is in question and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/donald-trump-truth.html?_r=0">nothing is real</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158976/original/image-20170301-5507-ug5g29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are lies becoming our rose-colored glasses?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yamagatacamille/4124052288">Christian Bucad</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even more worrisome, the general public seems to have an appetite for falsehood. As writer Adam Kirsch recently argued, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/books/lie-to-me-fiction-in-the-post-truth-era.html?_r=0">more and more, people seem to want to be lied to</a>.” The lie, Kirsch argues, is seductive: “It allows the liar and his audience to cooperate in changing the nature of reality itself, in a way that can appear almost magical.”</p>
<p>And when this magical transformation of reality occurs, whether in a political or scientific context, it becomes <a href="https://theconversation.com/unbelievable-news-read-it-again-and-you-might-think-its-true-69602">very difficult to reverse</a>. As the writer Jonathan Swift put it, “<a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/">Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it</a>.”</p>
<p>Psychiatrists are not in a position to comment on the mental health of public figures they have not personally evaluated or on the nature of falsehoods sometimes voiced by our political leaders. Indeed, the “<a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/deconstructing-and-reconstructing-goldwater-rule">Goldwater Rule</a>” prohibits us from doing so. Nevertheless, psychiatrists are keenly aware of the all-too-human need to avoid or distort unpleasant truths. Many would likely nod in agreement with an observation often attributed to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung: “<a href="http://www.azquotes.com/quote/675269">People cannot stand too much reality</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald W. Pies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alternate realities don’t just exist in politics – and not all falsehoods are lies. Distortions of the truth can range from a normal part of human nature to pathological.Ronald W. Pies, Professor of Psychiatry, Lecturer on Bioethics & Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University; and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/701022016-12-21T10:56:55Z2016-12-21T10:56:55ZWhy we become more forgetful with age – and what you can do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149109/original/image-20161207-18067-7no0jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's going on in the brain?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Ozgur Coskun/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How is it that we are able to remember some events in great detail whereas other memories seem to fade away over time? Our memory changes with age, so that we may have a memory slip on a trip to fetch something from the next room, but we’re still able to recall important events from history with great detail. But why? </p>
<p>One important aspect of memory formation and retention is the associations we build between the information we later try to remember and other details. For example, when and where the event took place, who was there, or the feelings we felt at the time. These details not only help us as clues to search our memory, but they also allow the mental time travel we all experience when we recall those detailed memories, so that it feels like we can relive an experience in our minds.</p>
<p>Scientists refer to this experience as recollection, and some distinguish it from familiarity, which refers to the general feeling that we have experienced something before, but are not quite able to put our finger on all of the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quirks-memory/201208/nagging-feeling-familiarity-face">details of the event</a>. For example, you see someone at the supermarket or on public transport who instantly seems very familiar, but you cannot recall who they are. </p>
<p>The experience of familiarity is very fast – you can quickly detect that you may know the person – but recollecting the details of who they are comes a bit more slowly (hopefully before they approach you). This is an example of how the processes differ on a subjective, or what’s called a phenomenological, level. </p>
<h2>What’s going on in the brain</h2>
<p>Apart from the behavioural and phenomenological differences that make the familiarity versus recollection of a face seem distinct from each other, research <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17636547">has also indicated</a> that different areas of the brain underlie the phenomena. The hippocampus, within the medial temporal lobes of the brain, is strongly involved in forming the associations that help to give rise to recollection, whereas the nearby perirhinal and entorhinal cortices appear to be more important for familiarity.</p>
<p>Research has shown that the ability to retrieve details of an event and the phenomenological experience of recollection decline as people get older, whereas familiarity remains relatively the same <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19100756">regardless of age</a>. Studies have also shown that the structural integrity of the hippocampus <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15703252">declines</a> with increased age, whereas the entorhinal cortex showed minimal changes in volume. In other words, areas of the brain such as the hippocampus that are important for recollection tend to decline in volume, whereas the areas that support familiarity remain more intact as people get older. </p>
<p>Scientists also know that memory does not work as a flawless tape-recorder: it is often the case that we not only forget information, but also misremember it, even if we feel as if we recollect an experience vividly and accurately. That older adults are increasingly unable to retrieve specific details of an event means they could be more susceptible to <a href="http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/False_memory">experiencing false memory</a>.</p>
<h2>How to stop memories from slipping</h2>
<p>So what can be done to deter or reverse these changes in older age? While there is no magical pill or super food that can protect us, research suggests a number of strategies that can help ameliorate some of the more difficult impacts of ageing on our memories. </p>
<p>One popular suggested solution is to do as many crosswords and sudoku puzzles as possible. It is a perfectly intuitive idea: if we think of the brain like a muscle, then we should exercise that muscle as much as possible to keep it sharp and fit. Yet, so far there is scant evidence to support this belief. </p>
<p>At best, you can expect to get very good at doing crosswords and sudoku, but the transfer of those skills to other kinds of abilities that are further away, such as being better able to reason abstractly or remember more information, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26082279">is less supported</a> by research evidence.
So, you should certainly keep doing crosswords if you enjoy doing them, but do not believe or <a href="http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/brain-training.html">buy into the hype</a> that such brain training will ward off cognitive decline or dementia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149112/original/image-20161207-18057-1e9o4i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exercising the mind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jgolby/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The method more likely to help is to simply engage in more physical exercise, particularly aerobic exercise. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12661673">research</a> regarding the benefits of exercise not only to your physical health but also to your mental health and abilities is much more settled than that of brain training. This does not have to be strenuous exercise that involves running marathons. Something as simple as brisk walking, or anything that gets your heart pumping and causes you to break a sweat, shows strong benefits to your memory performance. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21282661">Research</a> has also indicated that areas of the brain such as the hippocampus which are important for memory show increases in volume as a result of aerobic exercise. </p>
<p>So the best advice for improving your memory is to use that half hour you might have spent doing a sudoku puzzle to go for a nice walk with a friend instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Loaiza received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>What’s going on in the brain when something seems familiar but we don’t know why.Vanessa Loaiza, Lecturer, Department of Pyschology, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655232016-10-07T09:27:58Z2016-10-07T09:27:58ZThe more you know about a topic the more likely you are to have false memories about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138666/original/image-20160921-21695-yydsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-269287529/stock-photo-thinking-teacher.html?src=pd-same_model-269287388-2">turlakova/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Human memory does not operate like a video tape that can be rewound and rewatched, with every viewing revealing the same events in the same order. In fact, memories are reconstructed every time we recall them. Aspects of the memory can be altered, added or deleted altogether with each new recollection. This can lead to the phenomenon of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-false-memories-49454">false memory</a>, where people have clear memories of an event that they never experienced. </p>
<p>False memory is surprisingly common, but a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311200217X">number</a> <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/10/655.short">of</a> <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000169181000212X">factors</a> can increase its frequency. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2016.1237655">Recent research</a> in my lab shows that being very interested in a topic can make you twice as likely to experience a false memory about that topic.</p>
<p>Previous research has indicated that experts in a few clearly defined fields, such as <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608003000189">investments</a> and <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/1/3.short">American football</a>, might be more likely to experience false memory in relation to their areas of expertise. Opinion as to the cause of this effect is divided. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608003000189">Some</a> researchers <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8064252">have suggested</a> that greater knowledge makes a person more likely to incorrectly recognise new information that is similar to previously experienced information. Another interpretation suggests that experts feel that they should know everything about their topic of expertise. According to <a href="http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/3/535.abstract">this account</a>, experts’ sense of accountability for their judgements causes them to “fill in the gaps” in their knowledge with plausible, but false, information.</p>
<p>To further investigate this, we asked 489 participants to rank seven topics from most to least interesting. The topics we used were football, politics, business, technology, film, science and pop music. The participants were then asked if they remembered the events described in four news items about the topic they selected as the most interesting, and four items about the topic selected as least interesting. In each case, three of the events depicted had really happened and one was fictional. </p>
<p>The results showed that being interested in a topic increased the frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. Critically, it also increased the number of false memories – 25% of people experienced a false memory in relation to an interesting topic, compared with 10% in relation to a less interesting topic. Importantly, our participants were not asked to identify themselves as experts, and did not get to choose which topics they would answer questions about. This means that the increase in false memories is unlikely to be due to a sense of accountability for judgements about a specialist topic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138764/original/image-20160922-22500-wxzqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memory is not like a video tape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-266696114/stock-photo-video-cassette-isolated-on-white-background.html?src=14D_G8yH5eOkWyo6Jaw9bw-1-5">Olha Vlasiuk/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A possible explanation</h2>
<p>Our interpretation of our results supports the theory that false memories arise as a <a href="https://books.google.ie/books?id=r0yjoYvv3_YC&lpg=PA179&ots=GWbeHoB--m&dq=mitchell%20johnson%20source%20monitoring&lr&pg=PA179#v=onepage&q=mitchell%20johnson%20source%20monitoring&f=false">side-effect of the mechanisms underlying true memories</a>. Briefly, the more a person knows about a topic, the more memories relating to that topic are stored in their brain. When new information about that topic is encountered, it may trigger similar memory traces that are already stored. This can result in a sense of familiarity or recognition of the new material, which in turn leads to the conviction that the information has been encountered before, and is in fact an existing memory. </p>
<p>Here’s an example: imagine you are very interested in polar bears. You read wildlife magazines, watch nature documentaries and subscribe to real-time video streams of polar bears in the wild. One day, a friend tells you about a news article they read last year describing a polar bear getting caught in a trawler’s fishing net. Despite the fact that you have never heard this story before, it triggers associated memories about polar bears being endangered and concerns about arctic trawling. The story feels familiar, so you become convinced that you remember hearing about the event at the time. The more information you have about the topic, the more likely it is that new information will trigger old, associated memories.</p>
<p>Our research has implications for the way we think about memory. Most people are fairly confident in their own memory for events, but false memory is a lot more frequent than they realise. Counter-intuitively, our results suggest that while being interested in something does make you more knowledgeable, these memories may not always be reliable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ciara Greene receives funding from the Irish Research Council and the Fulbright Commission of Ireland.</span></em></p>The more information you have about a subject, the more likely it is that new information will trigger associated memories.Ciara Greene, Assistant Professor, University College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/557212016-03-16T15:28:14Z2016-03-16T15:28:14ZRemember: a bad memory is actually good for you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115309/original/image-20160316-30222-5wppob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Memory lane is often better than the real thing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lakeview Images/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s not uncommon to hear people wishing that they had a better memory. “If only I weren’t so forgetful”, they complain. “If only I could reliably remember my computer password, and that my neighbour’s name is Sarah, not Sandra.” If this sounds familiar then I know how you feel. As a psychologist who studies the science of remembering, it’s especially embarrassing to me that my memory is frequently dreadful. When asked whether I had a good weekend, I often struggle to immediately recollect enough details to provide an answer.</p>
<p>But it’s precisely because I study remembering that I’m acutely aware of how our memory’s flaws, frustrating and inconvenient though they can be, are among its most important characteristics. Human memory isn’t like a recording device for accurately capturing and preserving the moment, or a computer hard disk for storing the past in bulk. Instead, human memory serves up only the gist of an event, often with a healthy side of ego-flattery, lashings of indulgent wrong-righting, and a painkiller for the next morning.</p>
<p>Consider the sorts of things we are particularly good at failing to remember accurately. In one <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/7/5/265.short">study</a>, university students were asked to recall their high school grades. The students were truthfully informed that the researcher had full access to their official records, so it was clear there was nothing to gain from intentionally distorting the truth. </p>
<p>The students misremembered about a fifth of their grades, but not all grades were misremembered equally. The higher the grade, the more likely the students were to remember it: A-grades were expertly recalled, whereas F-grades were recalled very poorly. Overall, the students were far more likely to recall their grades as being better than they had been, than to recall them as worse than they had been.</p>
<p>Findings such as these illustrate how misremembering can be self-serving, supporting our well-being by pushing us to feel good about ourselves. In other cases, misremembering can help to protect our belief in fairness and justice. </p>
<p>In a Canadian <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109000389">study</a>, participants read about a man named Roger who had won several million dollars on the lottery. Some participants learned that Roger was a man who worked hard and was kind to others: a man who fully deserved his lucky win. Other participants learned that Roger was undeserving: a lazy man who complained a lot, and never smiled. When asked to recall exactly how much money Roger had won, those who believed he was undeserving recalled his prize as, on average, $280,000 lower than the figure recalled by those who believed he was deserving.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115311/original/image-20160316-30227-zu4jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memory is more like photos, plus Photoshop, than just the images alone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mariia Masich/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are just two of many examples in which our memory behaves like the good friend who protects us from hearing bad news or cruel gossip about ourselves. When we reliably learn that a serial cheat has been hired by a prestigious law firm, we later misremember that this news <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03193060">came from an unreliable source</a>. When someone gives us critical feedback on our character traits, we <a href="http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.22.1.4.30987">selectively forget many of the less-flattering bits</a>. And by and large, our unhappy memories lose their sting <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2014.884138">long before our happy memories lose their fervour</a>.</p>
<p>The cumulative effect of these small self-deceptions over time is that, just like an over-protective good friend, memory gives us a distorted but altogether rosier perception of the world and of ourselves. And who wouldn’t choose to wear these rose-tinted glasses? </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1740/abstract">recent study</a>, psychologists asked members of the public whether they would (hypothetically) take a drug that could guarantee to numb the pain of a traumatic memory. Fascinatingly, most (82%) said they would not. There is no doubt that we place a huge value on the (apparent) authenticity of our personal memories, both good and bad, and so it’s clear that the idea of actively interfering with these memories seems wholly unappealing to many of us. </p>
<p>But we should also be sceptical about the desirability of a world in which every past event can be retained perfectly in memory: authentic, objective, unapologetic, and unadulterated. Although flawed memories are often a nuisance and sometimes disastrous, they can also do wonders for maintaining our self-esteem, satisfaction, and well-being. In these respects at least, perhaps we shouldn’t be too critical of our manipulative friend, memory, for pulling the wool over our eyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Memories help you gloss over those ugly bits with minimum fuss.Robert Nash, Lecturer in Psychology, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/494542015-10-22T11:31:42Z2015-10-22T11:31:42ZExplainer: what are false memories?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99003/original/image-20151020-32235-1r0dvok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277840/False-memories-fears-controversial-techniques-used-charity-supporting-Watson-s-abuse-victims.html">media reports</a> have raised questions over the therapy undergone by several people making allegations of historical sexual abuse against prominent public figures. In particular, it has been suggested that certain forms of therapy run a high risk of unintentionally generating false memories of sexual abuse. (False memories are memories for events that are either grossly distorted or never took place at all.) But why are there such fears around these kind of therapies?</p>
<p>Techniques to recover allegedly repressed memories <a href="http://www.guilford.com/books/Science-and-Pseudoscience-in-Clinical-Psychology/Lilienfeld-Lynn-Lohr/9781462517893">can include</a> hypnotic regression, guided imagery, and dream interpretation, and are based on certain notions of how memory works. The therapists involved typically believe that memories for traumatic experiences are automatically banished to the unconscious mind as a defence mechanism. They also believe that, although such memories can no longer be consciously accessed, they still exert a damaging influence, resulting in a wide range of common psychological problems including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and low self-esteem.</p>
<p>It is maintained that the only way to deal with these psychological problems is to recover the repressed memories and “work through them” guided by a skilled psychotherapist. Such beliefs and practices are still commonly <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/12/13/0956797613510718.abstract">used both in the US</a> and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2011.598157#.Viiq0dJAS70">the UK</a>. In fact, there is no credible evidence for the operation of this psychoanalytic notion of repression and very strong evidence that the conditions under which therapy takes place are indeed ideal conditions for the generation of false memories.</p>
<h2>Forgetting trauma is rare</h2>
<p>Evidence shows that, in general, traumatic experiences are much more likely to be <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018020">remembered than forgotten</a> There are some exceptions to this generalisation. For example, memories for any experiences that occur during the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.107/abstract;jsessionid=533F92B3847CB44982DECF6C08BEF5FD.f01t03">first few years</a> of life are very unlikely to be consciously accessible in adulthood. This is due to the phenomenon of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/memory/understand/childhood_amnesia.shtml">infantile or childhood amnesia</a>. The infant brain is simply not <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661306000532">physically mature</a> enough to lay down detailed autobiographical memories at that stage of life. Similarly, physical trauma to the brain in adulthood, as a result of an accident or being attacked, may prevent the consolidation of memories of the trauma.</p>
<p>Even memories for other types of traumatic experience suffered later in life may be distorted and incomplete. Memory <a href="https://theconversation.com/serial-your-memory-can-play-tricks-on-you-heres-how-34827">does not work like a video camera</a>, faithfully recording every detail of an experience. Instead, memory is a reconstructive process. Every time we recall an event, our memory will be based upon some more or less accurate memory traces but the mind will often automatically fill in any gaps without us being aware of it. In general, we remember the gist but not the details. </p>
<p>But, under certain circumstances, we can develop entirely false memories for events that never took place. This remarkable counter-intuitive finding has been demonstrated in hundreds of well controlled <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195154054.do">scientific studies</a> using a wide variety of methods. For example, volunteers might be repeatedly interviewed regarding events which their parents have confirmed they experienced during their early years. Without the volunteers’ knowledge, however, one additional event will be included which their parents have confirmed they never experienced, such as getting lost in a shopping mall at the age of five. In <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm">pioneering research</a> using this technique, American psychologist Elizabeth Loftus found that around a quarter of volunteers developed partial or detailed false memories of this sort.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/Imagine.htm">another piece of research</a>, volunteers were asked whether a number of fairly common childhood events, such as breaking a bone, ever happened to them personally. In an apparently unrelated study, they were then asked to imagine some of the events they initially said had never happened to them. Later, they were again asked about the events on the original list. This time, they were more likely to report that the events they imagined happened really did happen.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99197/original/image-20151021-15440-1hmd93y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Falsely remembered childhood incidents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In some cases, the results of such studies can be quite startling. For example, <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/14/0956797614562862.abstract">a recent study</a> by Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter found that 70% of their participants developed false memories for having committed a serious crime – such as assault with a weapon – involving police contact during their teenage years.</p>
<h2>Conditions for creating false memories</h2>
<p>Our understanding of false memories is advanced enough that we can specify fairly precisely the best conditions under which they will be generated. It turns out that these conditions correspond exactly to the conditions found in many psychotherapeutic contexts. As long ago as 1994, Stephen Lindsay and Don Read <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.2350080403/abstract">summarised the dangers</a> of “memory work” in psychotherapy in the light of what we know about memory distortion from experimental work. They wrote of four criteria:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Extreme forms of memory work in psychotherapy combine virtually all of the factors that have been shown to increase the likelihood of illusory memories or beliefs: (a) a trusted authority communicates a rationale for the plausibility of hidden memories of long-ago childhood trauma (that many clients have hidden memories, that the client’s psychological symptoms, physical symptoms, and dreams evidence them, and that doubt is a sign of ‘denial’) and (b) a trusted authority provides motivation for attempting to recover such memories (that healing is contingent on retrieving hidden memories).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(c ) The client is repeatedly exposed to suggestive information from multiple sources (anecdotes in popular books, other survivor’s stories, comments and interpretations offered by the therapist, etc), providing a ‘script’ for recovering memories as well as suggestions about particular details; and (d) techniques such as hypnosis and guided imagery enhance imagery and lower response criterion such that people are more willing to interpret thoughts, feelings, and images as memories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But despite widespread acceptance of such risks, these dubious forms of therapy are still employed by many psychotherapists. </p>
<p><em>Correction: This article was updated on October 28, 2015. The original article stated: “Techniques to recover false memories – memories for events that are either grossly distorted or never took place at all – can include hypnotic regression, guided imagery, and dream interpretation, and are based on certain notions of how memory works.” The article should have stated: “Techniques to recover allegedly repressed memories can include hypnotic regression, guided imagery, and dream interpretation, and are based on certain notions of how memory works.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher French is affiliated with the British False Memory Society and Falsely Accused Carers, Teachers and Other Professionals (FACT)</span></em></p>Traumatic memories recovered from the unconscious during therapy are more likely to be false memories than real.Christopher French, Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/479702015-09-22T16:59:42Z2015-09-22T16:59:42ZBrian Williams returns to the air – and memory research says we should give him a break<p>After being suspended without pay from NBC in February, Brian Williams <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/09/21/brian-williams-msnbc-return/72577410/">returns to television</a> this week. He won’t be heading back to the Nightly News desk (now anchored by Lester Holt), but he will be reporting breaking news updates on MSNBC, beginning with the pope’s visit to the United States.</p>
<p>Williams’ fall from grace at NBC came after he misrepresented, during a newscast, events that occurred while he was in Iraq in 2003. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/business/media/email-to-nbc-news-staff-about-brian-williams-suspension.html?_r=0">In a memo to staff</a> announcing Williams’ suspension, president of NBC News Deborah Turness also expressed concerns about Williams’ misconstrued accounts of other events that had taken place while reporting in the field.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/business/media/frantic-efforts-at-nbc-to-curb-rising-damage-caused-by-brian-williams.html">News reports indicate</a> those concerns included Williams’ claim that he’d seen a body floating in the French Quarter in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and even that Williams may have exaggerated rescuing puppies when he was a volunteer firefighter as a teenager.</p>
<p>The staff memo from Turness quoted Stephen B Burke, chief executive of NBC Universal, who said Williams’ actions were “inexcusable” and “jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News.”</p>
<p>Of course, it would have been inexcusable if Williams had <em>intentionally</em> misled viewers about his reporting experiences to bolster his credibility.</p>
<p>But there’s also a body of research that suggests these recollections could be honest mistakes, made over time – that his memories of the events may have gradually melded together, becoming confused with other news reports he’d seen on TV. </p>
<p>After all, let’s not forget that Williams’ initial eyewitness accounts of his experiences in Iraq were accurate. A colleague and I <a href="http://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem5001_3">studied</a> embedded reporting during the Iraq War. We found that embedded reporters used more personal pronouns in their reporting than non-embeds did, but they did so in the context of factual eyewitness coverage, and rarely offered personal opinions. So Williams’ reporting style is precisely the type of reporting that ensures – rather than violates – reporter objectivity. </p>
<p>It was only years later that Williams <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/07/brian-williams-rpg_n_6637014.html">incorrectly recalled</a> being behind the plane that was shot by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), and not in another formation.</p>
<p>Even then, the gist of much of what Williams recalled was not fabricated: he was traveling with troops in Iraq in 2003 and there was a plane that took on enemy fire from an RPG. Undoubtedly, it was a terrifying and highly memorable event. </p>
<p>Though something that frightening should be recalled in vivid detail, sometimes those vivid details, despite their verisimilitude, <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/19/9/919.short">are wrong</a>. Numerous studies have shown that memory is fallible, that even <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.284">recollection of highly emotional events</a> can be distorted over time. </p>
<p>Studies of “flashbulb memories” – memories of highly emotional news events – show people’s recollections of how they learned of those events (such as what they were doing and with whom) <a href="https://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-why-do-we-remember-learning-about-dramatic-events-so-vividly-39842">are still quite detailed years later</a>. </p>
<p>But they’re not always accurate. </p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511664069.003">One study</a> looked at the flashbulb memories of how people learned of the Challenger explosion. The researchers found that those memories were often inaccurate years later. And when they were wrong, the original memory of how they found out about the explosion was often replaced by a memory of watching it on television.</p>
<p>The authors of that study did not explore this television link further, but as a media scholar I did in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Media-American-Crisis-Studies-September/dp/0761831843">a study</a> of flashbulb memories and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>Unlike the Challenger study, I looked at memories of the event months, rather than years, after the terrorist attacks. I found no false memories, but participants did report viewing television almost immediately after learning about the event. And they continued watching for hours. </p>
<p>So is it any surprise that, after watching TV so soon after hearing of a horrific news event, people might, years later, falsely remember that they first learned about it while watching television? And that journalists who were on the ground might conflate TV reports with memories of their own experiences? </p>
<p>How much video did Brian Williams watch of the Katrina aftermath? His recollection of the floating body happened in 2006, a year after covering the event. That’s less time than the three-year study period of the Challenger flashbulb memory research, which did find that television intrudes into memories, but more than the three-month time period of my study, which did not. </p>
<p>It’s certainly possible that Williams’ recollection a year later confused what he’d witnessed firsthand and what he later viewed – most likely repeatedly – in recorded coverage of this highly emotional event.</p>
<p>Williams is smart enough to know it would be foolish to intentionally exaggerate his experiences, especially when there’s a record of his initial accounts to contradict them – and that he had a lot to lose if he did. </p>
<p>While NBC executives may insist this doesn’t excuse making incorrect statements from the anchor desk, it may at least explain <em>why</em> it happened.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the years after a traumatic news event, we’re prone to confuse things we saw on TV with what we witnessed in person.Julia Fox, Associate Professor in the Media School , Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437552015-07-13T05:24:50Z2015-07-13T05:24:50ZThe legacy of implanted Satanic abuse ‘memories’ is still causing damage today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88089/original/image-20150710-17462-1s50lvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unhappy memories of a past that never was.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When 21-year-old nurse Carol Felstead went to her doctor complaining of repeated headaches, she wasn’t just prescribed painkillers. Instead, she was referred for psychotherapy that would ultimately involve hypnosis to “recover” so-called repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Carol subsequently came to believe that her parents were the leaders of a Satanic cult and that her mother murdered another of her children, sat Carol on top of the body and then set fire to the family home.</p>
<p>But these allegations were untrue and the memories they were based upon were incorrect. Today, almost 30 years on, “recovered memory therapy” has been discredited by the scientific and academic community and is known to implant false memories, apparent memories for events that never actually happened. </p>
<p>Experimental psychologists have <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/3/291.full">repeatedly demonstrated</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/1ohI2qp">the ease</a> with which false memories <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Coan/publication/246760350_Manufacturing_false_memories_using_bits_of_reality/links/53d259730cf220632f3c932e.pdf">can be implanted</a> in a sizeable proportion of the population under well-controlled laboratory conditions. But it is also undoubtedly the case that such false memories can arise spontaneously as well as in the <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm">context of psychotherapy</a>.</p>
<p>Although we are typically not consciously aware of it, we often have to judge whether an apparent memory is real. Is it based upon mental events that were purely internally generated (for example, by imagination or a dream) or based upon events which really took place in the external world?</p>
<h2>Implanting false memories</h2>
<p>One of the techniques that has been shown to result in false memories is asking people to imagine events that <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/2/186.full">never actually took place</a>. It appears that, eventually and especially in people with good imaginations, the memory of the imagined event is misinterpreted as a memory for a real event. The use of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692104/pdf/9415925.pdf">hypnotic regression</a> is a particularly powerful means to implant false memories.</p>
<p>The correct chronology in Carol Felstead’s case is as follows: there was another daughter who was ill from birth and she died in hospital in 1962 from problems associated with a defective heart. The house fire was a tragic accident that occurred in 1963 and made the front page news of the local newspaper. But Carol was born in 1964. These events happened before she was alive. Carol later falsely claimed to have given birth to six babies who were meant to have been conceived and ritually sacrificed by the Satanic cult. Her medical records show that Carol was never pregnant.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carol Felstead (later Myers)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Carol <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/dec/11/carole-myers-satanic-child-abuse">cut off contact</a> with her family, changed her name to Carole Myers, and died in 2005, aged 41, in circumstances that are <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article4045170.ece">still unexplained</a>. Prior to receiving psychotherapy, she was a bright and intelligent young woman with her life ahead of her. Her story highlights the inherent dangers associated with unproven psycho-therapeutic techniques which seek to recover putative repressed memories of childhood trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse.</p>
<p>The latter is an abhorrent crime that can have devastating consequences for victims. Yet, while we must not lose sight of this, it is also important to remember that no one benefits from false allegations. Victims of childhood sexual abuse have <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018020&content=reviews">difficulty forgetting</a> –- not remembering -– what happened. False memory also has serious consequences and can lead to <a href="http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2288">family breakdown</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miscarriage-Memory-Historic-Abuse-Cases/dp/0955518415">miscarriages of justice</a>.</p>
<p>False memories aren’t limited to cases of alleged childhood abuse. The field of anomalistic psychology attempts to propose and, where possible, empirically test explanations for bizarre experiences based purely upon accepted psychological principles. Based upon <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anomalistic-psychology-christopher-c-french/?K=9781403995711">my own anomalistic psychology research</a> and that of others, there is little doubt in my mind that sincerely held bizarre memories of past lives and alien abductions are best explained as being <a href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/media/2003-french-fantastic.pdf">false memories</a>. Such memories can sometimes be distressing for those that hold them but rarely cause distress for others. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is not true of Satanic abuse claims. For many people, it is all too easy to believe, even in the absence of convincing evidence, that memories of childhood sexual abuse may be repressed and then recovered during psychotherapy. This is partly because it is sadly true that such abuse is a lot more common than was once accepted.</p>
<p>But it is also because Freud’s pseudoscientific influence lingers on. The psychoanalytic notion of repression is that when something extremely traumatic happens an automatic involuntary defence mechanism kicks in that pushes the memory for the trauma into an inaccessible part of the mind. But this is simply <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/Cosmo.html">not supported</a> by the empirical evidence. </p>
<h2>Helping victims</h2>
<p>The only definitive way to tell false memories from real ones is by reference to independent external evidence. Subjectively, false memories can be every bit as detailed and compelling as real ones. The best that can be hoped for is that, by appealing to external evidence, one can convince the victim that their memories do not reflect reality thus converting them into what psychologists refer to as <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/08/04/0956797610379865.full">“non-believed memories”</a>.</p>
<p>In the case of Carol Felstead, it would have been a very easy matter to have checked her claims with the documented historical record and to have established that they were delusions. Instead, those that treated her uncritically accepted her account and fuelled those delusions. </p>
<p>Allegations of childhood abuse should always be listened to and examined carefully. But we must treat stories based on “recovered memories” with the level of scepticism they deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher French is a member of the Professional and Scientific Advisory Board of the British False Memory Society.</span></em></p>Historic use of “recovered memory” therapy led to false allegations of abuse that continue to haunt the families involved.Christopher French, Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/374472015-02-13T10:43:50Z2015-02-13T10:43:50ZBrian Williams told a tale – but it could be how he really remembers what happened<p>Many of us have asked ourselves in the past few days: can you really falsely remember something as significant as being in a helicopter that was shot down? And many of us probably think “No way,” and quickly conclude that NBC news anchor Brian Williams invented this story to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-reporter-as-action-hero-what-could-possibly-go-wrong-37317">embellish his public image</a> as a news anchor who put his life in danger.</p>
<p>But before condemning Brian Williams as a narcissistic liar, let’s take a closer look at what memory research has to say about false memories and memories of traumatic experiences. This work suggests it’s plausible that Williams is truthfully describing what he remembers.</p>
<p>Brian Williams correctly remembered the incident in Iraq shortly after it happened. At that time, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/business/brian-williamss-apology-over-iraq-account-is-challenged.html">recounted</a> being in a helicopter flying behind another helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. However, later, he “misremembered” being in the helicopter that was struck.</p>
<p>How is it possible to remember something initially and then change your account of the experience later on? You can imagine that being in a helicopter under Iraqi attack would be extremely stressful. This stress could have been further exacerbated by the fact that for some time while in the air, Williams probably didn’t know exactly what was going on or why his helicopter had to land. There was lots of uncertainty.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0047707">times of stress</a>, our attention narrows – we can only take in the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03329743">crucial aspects</a> of an experience, ignoring details that are not central to our survival. So Williams most likely already started out with a fuzzy memory. Given its traumatic character, we can assume that Williams recounted this memory many times in the weeks and months following the incident, frequently reactivating the memory, and potentially imagining different outcomes.</p>
<p>We know from research that memory reactivation makes memories <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.365707">temporarily fragile</a>. Imagining something that didn’t happen but is related to what actually did happen can rather <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03211367">easily infiltrate</a> our memories.</p>
<p>And these <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.94705">distortions</a> are more likely to occur with time. This can explain why <a href="https://theconversation.com/vagaries-of-memory-mean-eyewitness-testimony-isnt-perfect-34692">eyewitness reports</a> are so unreliable. In the aftermath of an event, especially a significant one, people ask questions, and make suggestions – and the way the questions are asked and what they suggest alters memories.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3">famous study</a>, memory researcher <a href="http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/eloftus/">Elizabeth Loftus</a> showed people a <a href="http://www.holah.co.uk/summary/loftus/">video of an accident</a> involving two cars. Later she asked subjects to estimate the speed of the cars at the time of collision and whether there was broken glass. Answers differed depending on whether the experimenter used the verb “hit” or “smash” in her questions, with the latter causing higher speed estimates and memories of broken glass – a false memory, because there was no broken glass in the video.</p>
<p>If you’re still skeptical whether Williams could have suffered an unintentional memory failure, consider new research by <a href="http://www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/departments/psychology/staff/julia-shaw">Julia Shaw</a> and <a href="https://people.ok.ubc.ca/stporter/Steve_Porter.html">Stephen Porter</a>. They were <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562862">able to implant</a> completely made-up rich false memories into ordinary people in a lab setting. Over as few as three interviews, they suggested to subjects that they had committed a crime in adolescence. Asking them detailed questions about the crime – which never happened – caused 70% of participants to believe that they had indeed committed the crime. Beyond just believing it, they remembered the made-up memory in as much detail as they remembered true memories from their past. </p>
<p>Additionally, most of us are quite confident that we remember important events – for instance, where we were and what we did when we first heard about the 9/11 attacks. It turns out that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.02453">subjective confidence is a very bad indicator</a> of memory accuracy. Despite our subjective feelings of accuracy, these “flashbulb memories” are subject to forgetting and distortion just like any other memory.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71891/original/image-20150212-13219-1am85lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Time to consign the idea of memories as faithful videos to the dustbin of history.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/54268887@N00/5114160903">Rob Pearce</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What does all this tell us? Our memories are not like videos stored away in the library of our brain, waiting to be replayed. Instead, our memories are always reconstructions and, as such, highly malleable. </p>
<p>All that being said, it could of course also be the case that Brian Williams intentionally told the story wrong. Although many people have jumped to this conclusion, it contradicts commonsense. Why would he change his account after he had originally told the truth in public, and despite knowing that there were several witnesses to the event? As a news anchor, he is all too familiar with the dangers of false reporting. Rather than the fog of war, the vagaries of memory are likely to blame in this controversy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37447/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Almut Hupbach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many of us have asked ourselves in the past few days: can you really falsely remember something as significant as being in a helicopter that was shot down? And many of us probably think “No way,” and quickly…Almut Hupbach, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Lehigh University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346922014-11-30T22:12:17Z2014-11-30T22:12:17ZVagaries of memory mean eyewitness testimony isn’t perfect<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65867/original/image-20141130-20606-1f9fm10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police often rely on witnesses to finger the right guy, but eyewitnesses are far from perfect.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=121070422&src=lb-29877982">Lineup image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twenty eyewitnesses testified before the grand jury investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. None of these accounts is fully consistent with any other. Moreover, eyewitnesses even gave accounts that do not agree with their own earlier versions. To the public and the media, these discrepancies have been startling. </p>
<p>But psychological scientists who study human perception and memory are not surprised at all. In fact, had there been good agreement among the various witnesses, psychological scientists would have been very suspicious and speculated that something was amiss. Those of us who study eyewitness memory have long observed that these accounts are far less reliable than people – including the eyewitnesses themselves – tend to believe. </p>
<h2>Making a memory</h2>
<p>What causes these memory errors? In order to report accurately on a witnessed event, the witness must successfully encode information on what he’s seen, store it as a memory and then retrieve it. Each of these three stages is complex and imperfect. The final memory report can be no better than the weakest part of each of the three stages.</p>
<p>Consider the encoding, or acquisition, stage. While witnessing an unexpected, complex event there is often confusion, distraction and fear. On top of this, there is an illusion of sorts that we are taking in the details of the scene. But studies show that the brain is actually primarily absorbing the gist of the scene and few of the details. This reflects a phenomenon called <a href="http://www.gocognitive.net/demo/change-blindness">change blindness</a> – people tend not to notice visual differences in the details of a scene. So what actually gets stored in the second stage of memory is full of gaps. The brain doesn’t like gaps, especially when there’s a need to understand what was just witnessed. These gaps are often filled in unconsciously with inferences, deductions or other processes that are not very reliable.</p>
<p>The groundbreaking work of cognitive psychologist <a href="http://www.holah.co.uk/summary/loftus/">Elizabeth Loftus</a> illustrates vividly how memory changes after the witnessed event as a function of externally-provided information – even when that information is false. This can result in false memories. What is stored in memory is not a stagnant picture or video of the event but a constantly-edited record that evolves. Since we tend not to be aware of the editing process, we end up believing that the reconstructed memory is what we actually saw.</p>
<p>Finally, we have to retrieve the memory and retrieval itself can alter it. Every time we retrieve a false memory – privately to ourselves or by telling another person – it tends to strengthen that false memory. In the end we have a full story of what we saw, one that we might very confidently believe but might have only a very distant relation to what actually happened.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65869/original/image-20141130-20582-wit2y0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Since the courts rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, they should stick to recommended best practices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CourtEqualJustice.JPG">Matt H. Wade</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fallible memories and the legal system</h2>
<p>There is good documentation of how eyewitness unreliability plays out in eyewitness identification – when a witness points to an individual and says “that’s who I saw commit the crime.” Since the 1970s, <a href="http://public.psych.iastate.edu/glwells/">my research program</a> has conducted controlled experiments that show how easily witnesses will pick the wrong person from a lineup. Then, with only the slightest reinforcement, they become convinced and highly confident in their mistaken identification. Making this mistake then causes their memory to change to fit the person they mistakenly identified. </p>
<p>This kind of mistaken eyewitness identification is not just a laboratory phenomenon: since the advent of forensic DNA testing in the 1990s, hundreds of innocent Americans who had been convicted by juries and served hard time (some even sentenced to death row) have been <a href="http://www.innocenceproject.org/">exonerated by DNA tests</a>. Tellingly, approximately 75% of those exonerations were cases involving mistaken eyewitness identification.</p>
<p>The legal system has been slow to respond to eyewitness science. Despite the fact that the legal system relies very heavily on eyewitnesses, the legal system has no theory of memory, law enforcement is not educated about the workings of memory, judges are not trained on how memory works (and does not work) and a large percentage of courtrooms do not permit expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness memory. </p>
<h2>How best to use eyewitness testimony</h2>
<p>This year, however, a blue ribbon panel of the National Academy of Sciences conducted an extensive review of the science on eyewitness identification. Among other things, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.17226/18891">Academy’s report</a> calls for all law enforcement agencies to provide their officers and agents with training about vision and memory, practices for minimizing contamination of eyewitnesses, and the use of effective protocols for obtaining and preserving eyewitness accounts. The Academy report also calls for the use of expert testimony about eyewitness reliability in certain cases as well as jury instructions that might help jurors make more informed judgments about eyewitness reliability.</p>
<p>None of this should be taken as evidence that eyewitnesses are always wrong. Eyewitness testimony is a critical tool in the legal system for reconstructing what actually happened. Too many bad guys would go free if eyewitness memory were completely discarded as a tool. But the legal system needs a more sophisticated appreciation for the vagaries of memory, how to avoid contamination of eyewitness memory and the conditions under which eyewitness testimony is more and less trustworthy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary Wells receives funding from: The National Science Foundation</span></em></p>Twenty eyewitnesses testified before the grand jury investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. None of these accounts is fully consistent with any other. Moreover, eyewitnesses…Gary Wells, Professor of Psychology, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.