Elizabeth F Loftus 'Creating False Memories'

Lost in the Mall?

The article that I have chosen to review is titled “Creating False Memories” written by Elizabeth F Loftus, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington (Loftus 1997). In this article, Loftus focuses in on what is known as the “misinformation effect” which she has been studying since the early 1970s. The misinformation effect states that when people are exposed to misinformation after an event, their memories of the event can become distorted (Loftus, 1997). This can become problematic when a therapist tries to help a client with repressed memories, especially those from childhood. The greater the passage of time, the easier it becomes to modify a memory (Loftus, 1997). Loftus suggests that those

This experiment consisted of twenty-four subjects that ranged from eighteen years of age to fifty-three. After talking to a relative of the subjects, Loftus created a pamphlet for each subject containing three real life events and one false event. The false event was that of being lost in a mall around the age of five and included the subject crying, being helped by an elderly woman, and finally reunited with their family (Loftus, 1997). These pamphlets were then given to the subjects. After reading about the three real events and the one false event, the subjects were then asked to write about all four events. Seven of the twenty-four claimed that they remembered part of the false event. After two follow ups, six of the subjects still maintained that they could remember the false event (Loftus,

This becomes easier when that event is corroborated by another person. Loftus goes on to say that the practice of implanting an idea does occur in today’s society. This can be found in the form of police interrogations. It also occurs when some mental health professionals ask clients to imagine events from their childhood, in order to recover hidden memories (Loftus, 1997). In a clinical survey, it was found that twenty-two percent of psychologists encouraged their clients to “give free reign to the imagination” (Loftus, 1997). This can be dangerous when trying to resurface repressed memories because it may cause source confusion. That is when the content and source of information becomes disassociated (Loftus, 1997). Another one of Loftus’s experiments involved asking participants to remember childhood events, some real and some imaginary. One such event was falling and breaking a window with their hand. After several follow ups, twenty-four percent of the participants that were asked to remember breaking the window reported an increase in confidence the memory was real (Loftus, 1997). This shows that when you place yourself in an imaginary childhood event, the memory can become more familiar. The imaginary memory may then be confused as being a real memory and not simply an act of imagination (Loftus, 1997). While it has been proven that false memories can be