False Memory Sociology

Unlike photographs or video footage, our memories cannot serve as completely accurate records of the past regardless of how rich a recollection may appear. In fact, our memory is rather capable of being erroneous. Not only are our memories vulnerable to forgetting, but also to suggestion and additional misleading details that may consequently alter the original memory. Recently, a great deal of research has been investigating the phenomenon of false memories—either remembering events that never occurred, or remembering them quite differently from the way said events actually happened (Roediger et al., 1995, p. 803). Although there has not been any evidence that has revealed false memories to cause direct harm, their interference with original

As a result, people often misremember their past, as demonstrated in previous literature. For instance, there has been evidence that false suggestion of a negative childhood food experience can both increase participants’ confidence that such an experience actually happened and lead to avoidance of that food in adulthood (Bernstein, Laney, Loftus, 2005, p. 26). Therefore, misleading details and suggestion can be planted into a person’s memory which consequently creates false memories in addition to influencing behavior in response. Counterfactual imaginings can have a similar effect where simply imagining childhood events can significantly inflate confidence that the event had occurred even when, in reality, it did not (Garry, Manning, & Loftus, 1996, p. 208). Such research demonstrates imagination inflation, or that idea that even a mental activity as simple as one’s imagination can increase people’s confidence that in the past they had an experience like the imagined one (Loftus, 2004, p. 145). In a similar fashion, Hyman et al. (1995) found that some individuals created false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews, especially those who discussed related background knowledge during the early interviews (p. 181). Therefore, what is already

153). Similarly, when Wilson et al. (2006) showed subjects footage of events that did or did not occur, those who believe in the paranormal were actually more susceptible to false memories compared to non-believers, thus presenting an association between dissociativity and the tendency to report having seen non-existent footage (p. 1500). In another study, results demonstrated that believers of the paranormal were more susceptible to suggestion than disbelievers, in the event that the suggestion was consistent with their belief (Wiseman, Greening, & Smith, 2003, p. 285). Here, the suggestion was that a table was levitating when it was actually stationary throughout the course of the experiment. Such studies are relevant to our discussion of false memories, for they demonstrate how even anomalous events can greatly influence one’s recount of a nonexistent