The Fiction of Memory | Elizabeth Loftus
Summary
TLDRThis talk delves into the fascinating yet unsettling nature of memory, emphasizing its importance in our lives. The speaker discusses the 'misinformation effect', demonstrating how easily memories can be distorted by false information. Through various studies, including the 'rich false memory paradigm', the speaker shows that it's possible to implant entirely false memories, affecting individuals' beliefs and behaviors. The talk concludes with a cautionary note on the impact of deep fakes and manipulated media on memory, underscoring the need for skepticism and verification.
Takeaways
- 🧠 Memory is crucial for daily life, guiding us through routine activities and holding our personal history.
- 🌟 The article 'The Grand Illusion' from New Scientist emphasizes memory's role in linking our present self to our past experiences.
- 🚫 The speaker warns of the fallibility of memory, suggesting we should be skeptical of our own recollections.
- 🔍 The 'misinformation paradigm' is a psychological method that demonstrates how post-event misleading information can alter memories.
- 👮♂️ Even trained soldiers can have their memories distorted by misinformation during aggressive interrogations.
- 🔧 The 'rich false memory paradigm' is a technique used to implant entirely false memories through suggestive interviews.
- 🔑 False memories can be emotionally compelling and neurologically indistinguishable from true memories.
- 🍽️ False memories can influence behavior, such as avoiding certain foods after recalling getting sick from them.
- 🔎 There's no foolproof method to differentiate between true and false memories, challenging assumptions about memory accuracy.
- ⚠️ The advent of deep fakes and doctored images/ videos poses a significant threat to the veracity of collective and individual memories.
Q & A
What is the primary function of memory according to the speaker?
-Memory serves as a repository of our experiences, both happy and sad, and is essential for our daily activities, relationships, and identity.
What is the 'grand illusion' mentioned in the script?
-The 'grand illusion' refers to the idea that memory is the only thing that links our present self to our past selves, forming the essence of who we are.
How can false memories be implanted, as discussed in the script?
-False memories can be implanted through various methods such as the misinformation paradigm, guided imagination, dream interpretation, and hypnosis, which can lead people to believe and remember events that never actually occurred.
What is the misinformation paradigm described in the script?
-The misinformation paradigm is a psychological study method where participants witness an event and later receive misleading information, which can distort their memory of the original event when tested.
Why are the findings on memory distortion significant according to the speaker?
-The findings are significant because misinformation is prevalent in real life, and it can affect witness testimonies, personal beliefs, and even legal outcomes.
What is the rich false memory paradigm and how does it differ from the misinformation paradigm?
-The rich false memory paradigm is a study method where no actual event occurs, but participants are given suggestive information about a past event that didn't happen. It differs from the misinformation paradigm by not relying on an initial real event to distort memories.
How successful are the methods in creating false memories, as per the studies mentioned?
-The studies mentioned show varying success rates, with some methods leading to false memories in about 30% of participants, while others, like the crime memory, can reach up to 70%.
What are the potential ethical implications of the ability to create false memories?
-The ethical implications include the misuse of memory manipulation for personal gain, the impact on legal proceedings, and the potential for altering personal identities and relationships.
How can false memories influence a person's behavior, as suggested in the script?
-False memories can influence a person's behavior by affecting their later thoughts, intentions, and actions, such as avoiding certain foods or activities they falsely remember having negative experiences with.
What is the role of doctored photographs and deep fakes in memory manipulation according to the script?
-Doctored photographs and deep fakes can play a significant role in memory manipulation by creating false visual evidence that can lead people to develop false memories and alter their attitudes and beliefs.
What is the key takeaway message from the speaker regarding memory and its authenticity?
-The key takeaway is that confidence, detail, and emotion in a memory do not guarantee its authenticity; independent corroboration is necessary to distinguish between true and false memories.
Outlines
🧠 The Power and Illusion of Memory
The speaker begins by emphasizing the critical role of memory in our daily lives, linking it to our ability to perform routine tasks and recall personal experiences. They highlight memory's dual nature as a repository for both joyful and sorrowful events. The speaker then contrasts this with an article from 'New Scientist' that poetically describes memory as the link to our past selves. However, they introduce a paradox by suggesting that there are reasons to be skeptical of our own memories. The speaker proposes a thought experiment, questioning whether it's possible to implant false memories, such as rescuing a cat or being attacked by an animal, and discusses their decades-long research into memory, introducing the 'misinformation paradigm' which demonstrates how post-event information can significantly alter memories.
🔍 The Misinformation Effect and Memory Distortion
In this section, the speaker delves into the 'misinformation effect,' explaining how it can distort memories, even among trained soldiers. They recount a study conducted with soldiers undergoing survival school, where misinformation post-interrogation led to false identifications and memories of non-existent objects. The speaker illustrates the pervasiveness of misinformation in real-world settings, such as witness discussions, leading questions, and media influence, which can all contaminate memory. The narrative transitions to a more extreme form of memory distortion observed in psychotherapy, where patients develop false memories of severe abuse or satanic rituals, often induced by techniques like guided imagination and dream interpretation.
🌱 Planting False Memories: The Rich False Memory Paradigm
The speaker introduces the 'rich false memory paradigm,' a method developed to study the implantation of entirely false memories. They describe an experiment where participants were led to believe they had been lost in a shopping mall as children, an event that never occurred. The study successfully implanted this false memory in a significant portion of the subjects. The speaker mentions other researchers who have used this paradigm to implant even more bizarre false memories, such as near-drowning experiences or witnessing demonic possessions. They also reference a mega-analysis that found about 30% of people developed false memories and an additional 20-30% developed a false belief in the suggested events, underscoring the susceptibility of human memory.
🌐 The Impact of False Memories and Ethical Considerations
Here, the speaker discusses the impact of false memories on behavior, citing studies where false memories of food-related illnesses reduced participants' willingness to consume those foods. They also mention the potential for false memories to alter attitudes and intentions. The speaker raises ethical questions about the use of memory-altering technologies, pondering whether they should be used to improve happiness or health or be banned. They express concern about the manipulative potential of doctored photographs and deep fakes, which can create false memories and influence attitudes, as demonstrated in studies involving political figures and public events.
🔎 The Challenge of Distinguishing True from False Memories
In the final paragraph, the speaker addresses the difficulty of distinguishing true memories from false ones, referencing a public case involving Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow. They challenge the assumption that emotional intensity or confidence in a memory indicates its authenticity, citing research showing that false memories can be as emotionally charged as true ones. The speaker also discusses the limitations of brain imaging in differentiating true from false memories, as neural signals during recall show similarities regardless of a memory's validity. They conclude with a cautionary message about the reliability of memories, emphasizing the need for independent corroboration and reflecting on the potential of false memories to be equally compelling as real ones.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Memory
💡Misinformation Paradigm
💡False Memories
💡Guided Imagination
💡Hypnosis
💡Rich False Memory Paradigm
💡Ethical Issues
💡Doctored Photographs
💡Deep Fakes
💡Corroboration
Highlights
Memory is crucial for daily life and forms the essence of who we are.
The 'grand illusion' article emphasizes memory's role in linking our past and present selves.
Memory can be manipulated, raising questions about the reliability of our recollections.
The misinformation paradigm demonstrates how post-event information can alter memories.
Misleading questions can lead people to remember seeing things that weren't there, such as a yield sign instead of a stop sign.
Memory distortion can occur not just in lab settings but also in real-world stressful situations.
Soldiers' memories of survival school experiences can be distorted by misinformation about their interrogators.
Non-existent objects can be 'remembered' when misinformation is introduced post-event.
The misinformation effect shows how easily memories can be contaminated by new information.
Therapies involving guided imagination and dream interpretation can lead to the formation of false memories.
The rich false memory paradigm involves planting entirely false memories to study their impact.
False memories can be emotionally charged and felt as real as true memories.
Functional MRI shows similar brain activity when recalling true and false memories.
False memories can influence future behavior, such as avoiding certain foods.
Deep fakes and doctored photographs can manipulate memories and attitudes towards public events.
False memories can be planted and believed regardless of the quality of the manipulation, as shown by studies with doctored photos.
The speaker concludes by emphasizing the need for independent corroboration to verify the authenticity of memories.
False memories, like false jewels, can appear just as real and brilliant as true ones, highlighting the importance of critical evaluation.
Transcripts
and I really need to start by
acknowledging something that I think we
all can appreciate which is memory is
pretty important to all of us and so
without without memory you wouldn't know
how to leave your room of a hotel and
come down to get coffee in the morning
when you're at home you wouldn't know
how to find the car keys or how to make
the toast or how to catch the bus or
whatever you're planning to do memory is
that repository of many of the happy
things that that happen to us and also
the sad things that happen to us
well that's what I usually say about the
importance of memory and then I was
reading an article in the new scientists
from last October something called the
grand illusion and they talked about the
importance of memory so much more
eloquently and beautifully than I could
and you ought to imagine this being said
with a British accent like Richard
Dawkins but memory perhaps the only
thing that links the you sitting here
today to the many yous from every
previous day of your existence that's
memory without memory your relationships
would mean nothing not to mention your
knowledge tastes and your many
adventures it might be no exaggeration
to say your memories are the essence of
you but I'm here to tell you now that
there are fresh reasons and some not so
fresh ones reasons that I've been
working on and trying to communicate for
the last number of decades reasons not
to believe your own memories so let me
ask you this question do you think do
you think I could make you remember if
it did not happen could I make you
remember that when you were a kid you
saw a cat stuck in a tree and you
rescued that cat you did this kind of
little heroic thing as a child could I
make you remember that could I make you
remember you were attacked by a vicious
animal
if it had never happened to you could I
make you remember that as a teenager you
committed a crime and it was serious
enough that the police actually came to
investigate could I make you remember
that just last week you played a game
and you cheated in the game and you took
money out of the game bag when you
weren't entitled to do it
could I could I make you remember these
things could I pour these things into
your mind and make you remember these
things if they didn't happen and if I if
I talked to lay people who don't know
anything about this body of scientific
work they'd say no way I would remember
being attacked by a vicious animal if
that didn't happen or committing a crime
if I didn't do it but we'll see how you
feel about this in another 25 minutes or
so because I've been studying memory for
the for the last number of decades for
decades or more now and over the course
of my career I've developed a couple of
paradigms for for how to study memory so
one of them is now known in the
psychological literature in the
textbooks as the misinformation paradigm
and what what happens here is that
people see some kind of event it might
be a crime an accident later on they're
going to get some post event information
usually misleading information of some
sort
and then finally they'll be tested to
see what they remember about their
experience so we've shown thousands and
thousands of people simulated accidents
for a while over these years and in one
of the oldest studies that I published
we showed people an accident well it
where this little red car went through
an intersection with a stop sign and by
asking a leading question that
insinuates it was a yield son we got
lots and lots of people to
even remember they saw a yield sign
controlling the intersection not a stop
sign we've shown that we can get these
kinds of results not just with college
students who are participating in
psychological experiments in a
laboratory setting but when you go out
and you interview people out there in
the real world who for some reason are
undergoing some very stressful
experience you also can see this kind of
contamination from post-event
misinformation so in some studies that
I've done in collaboration with a
psychiatrist named Charles Morgan
we studied soldiers who are going to
survival school in our country we have
soldiers who are going through an
arduous regimen to learn what it's going
to be like for them if they are ever
captured as prisoners of war and as part
of this survival school they go through
a half hour aggressive hostile
interrogation it's a it's aggressive and
hostile it used to even involve
waterboarding although they're not doing
that anymore and by supplying these
trained soldiers with misinformation we
can distort their memory for what
happened during the survival school so
they might have been interrogated by the
guy on your left but by supplying
misinformation we get them to believe
and remember and identify the person on
your right somebody who doesn't even
remotely resemble the actual
interrogator the way we did it in this
study for example is to take these
soldiers at the end of their survival
school show them a photo remember this
guy who conducted that interrogation of
you that was so horrible did he let you
talk to anyone else did he give you a
blanket did he give you anything to eat
and the trick is this is a photo of a
completely different person and that's
all it took
for lots and lots of these trained
soldiers to later on miss identify the
person who had conducted that
interrogation
we also planted non-existent objects
into the minds of these trained soldiers
so there was no telephone in the room
there was no weapon on the interrogator
he was not wearing glasses and without
misinformation the soldiers rarely
claimed to have seen these objects but
for other soldiers if we fed the
misinformation about the existence of
these objects
now lots and lots of these soldiers said
they remembered seeing a telephone in
the room a significant minority
remembered seeing a weapon or glasses on
the interrogator so now I've shown you
some examples of something that's now
called the misinformation effect this is
kind of a cartoon drawing of that effect
you supply people with misinformation
you put them in what we call the mislead
condition and you depress their memory
performance and we think this is
important because out there in the real
world misinformation is everywhere so we
get misinformation when witnesses talk
to each other after some significant
event is over when they're interrogated
by an investigator who's got some agenda
and our hypothesis communicates that
hypothesis and influences the the
witness when people read news coverage
about an event they can pick up
misinformation all of these provide an
opportunity for new information to enter
a witness's memory and cause an
alteration a transformation a distortion
in that memory well it would be the
1990s when I would start to see an
altogether more extreme kind of a memory
problem we saw patients for example
going into psychotherapy maybe they had
an eating disorder they were depressed
they had some problem that brought them
to the therapy and they come out of this
therapy thinking that they were
traumatized that they were severely
abused either by fathers or relatives or
some other people in their childhood
some of them coming to believe and have
memories that they were molested in
satanic rituals that they were forced to
kill animals and breed babies and kill
those babies all these incredible things
that they thought they were remembering
and when I first started to be involved
in court cases where people were being
sued based on these very very big
memories and some of them so bizarre it
was natural to ask well where were these
bizarre memories coming from and
invariably there was some kind of
psychotherapy that went on some kind of
psychotherapy that seemed to involve
guided imagination for example oh you
don't remember abuse but you got an
eating disorder you're depressed why
don't you just close your eyes and
imagine who might have done this to you
I don't know daddy and how old might you
have been and where might it have
happened this kind of guided imagination
there was sexualized dream
interpretation going on oh I remember
you know you the therapist it's okay if
you talk about your dreams with your
therapist it's okay if you recognize
that day residue gets into the dreams at
night and if you're worrying about
something during the day you might find
it as dream material at night but the
problem with these therapists is they
take the dream material and they tell
the patients that this means something
happened to them in the past so the
patient dreams about a snake and the
therapist says that's a penis I guess I
could kind of see that but I had a
a case where the the pens in Seattle
Washington actually where the patient
dreamt about a cinnamon roll and the the
therapist said that was a penis and I
didn't quite get that one and that's why
cross-examination is so great because on
cross the therapist could be asked now
what was it that caused you to know that
when your patient dreamt about a
cinnamon roll that that was a penis and
the therapist said well it would clearly
the goo on the cinnamon roll and so I
know you'll never think about cinnamon
rolls and in quite the same way after
this there was hypnosis going on which
with highly hypnotized people can lead
to even more memory distortion and
sometimes I think I just hit a mutant
thing that I was told not to yes just
exposing people to false information
well whatever was going on I wanted to
study this phenomenon where we're how is
it you can drop a seed this imagination
there's a little dream interpretation
and out of this and the minds of these
people can grow something as big as
daddy forced me into satanic rituals and
made me kill animals the misinformation
paradigm that I had developed and had
used in my studies for decades it just
wasn't going to cut it because what was
going on here was something much bigger
and so we developed this new paradigm
called the rich false memory paradigm
where there is no event to begin with
but we ply people with suggestions about
the past and then we test them to see
what they do or don't remember and in
our first attempt to do this we planted
a false memory that when you were about
five or six years old you were lost in a
shopping mall you were frightened and
crying and ultimately rescued by an
elderly person reunited with the family
with three suggestive interviews we
succeeded with about a quarter of
ordinary
men and women other investigators came
along and planted even more bizarre or
upsetting rich false memories one group
planted a false memory you nearly
drowned and had to be rescued by a
lifeguard succeeding with about 1/3 of
their sample a Canadian group planted a
false memory that when you were a kid
you were attacked by a vicious animal or
you had a serious indoor or outdoor
accident succeeding with about half of
their sample with Italian collaborators
in a study we did in Italy we planted a
false memory that when you were a kid
you witnessed someone being demonically
possessed and a fairly recent study in
one of our top journals also out of
Canada when you were a teenager you
committed a crime and it was serious
enough that the police actually came to
investigate and they were so good that
they were getting reporting that getting
about 70% of ordinary adults to come to
believe and remember in this this
made-up story and my own students have
done the studies we're planning a false
memory that you saw cap stuck in a tree
and rescued it all kinds of rich false
memories how often does this happen
there's a mega analysis that was
published this is not a meta-analysis
but in the traditional sense but
something that these Canadian British
and US investigators came together they
took a large number of studies that had
attempted to plant these rich false
memories published this at the end of
2017 and they gathered information on
423 subjects who had gone through these
kinds of suggestive procedures using a
common coding scheme discovered that
about 30 percent of the time people
developed a false memory and an
additional 20
3% of the time people developed a false
belief that this had happened to them
even if they didn't have that sense of
recollection we think that's important
because just getting people to believe
that something happened to them is in
some sense the first step down that
royal road to developing a rich false
memory other investigators and we too
have used a variety of other techniques
often techniques that are modeled after
this suspicious psychotherapy that we
saw going on in many of these court
cases guided imagination or dream
interpretation hypnosis and so on these
can lead people to develop rich false
memories we've also shown that if I
plant a false memory in you it has
repercussions it can affect your later
thoughts your later intentions or later
behaviors so for example in some of our
work we planted a false memory that you
got sick eating a particular food
sometimes pickles sometimes eggs
sometimes strawberry ice cream and
people don't want to eat those foods as
much you can put these foods in front of
people in a picnic type setting and
people eat fewer of those foods after
they develop a false memory of having
gotten sick as a child and you can do
the opposite with people you can plan a
warm fuzzy memory which we did about
asparagus and people are more interested
in eating that healthy food and by the
way these things work not just on food
so we planted a false memory that is a
teenager you got sick on a vodka drink
this hasn't worked for me but for many
of the subjects people are less
interested in having a vodka drink so I
get asked lots of questions about this
phenomenon then the malleable memory and
the development of false memories and so
I know
what some of your questions are is there
any way for example to tell the
difference between a true memory and a
false one and I was reading my hometown
paper the LA Times and there was no
there had been an article about Woody
Allen and the fact that his daughter
Dylan Farrow had accused him of sexual
abuse when she back when she was 7 years
old when Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were
going through a terrible terrible
breakup and now the grown-up Dylan
Farrow is in the public eye again saying
you know in light of the me2 movement
maybe people will believe me now because
I was abused by Woody Allen even though
at the time there was a massive
investigation by Yale investigators and
no finding of any abuse whatsoever
well what caught my eye in the LA Times
was a letter to the editor and you can't
read that letter but I've blown up the
part I want you to read she says this a
therapist who has worked with many
sexual abuse victims I can recognize
when the stories are valid and Dylan
Farrow story rings very true so I'm
reading this thing I'm thinking what is
ringing for this lady
what is ringing that makes you know
because you see her on TV or you read a
quote from her in the newspaper
that her story is true when you know
nothing else maybe she's responding to
the emotion of the situation that so we
can ask our true memories more emotional
than false ones and in some work done by
one of my former graduate students her
dissertation work we showed that in fact
false memories can be held with exactly
as much emotion as true ones well how
about how about the brain and you know
it maybe if we could get some neural
signals when people are recounting
something that's false it would look
different than when they're recounting
something that's true
and so with a couple of scientists who
know a whole lot about functional
magnetic resonance imaging we put people
into a scanner while they're recounting
false memories or true memories and the
overwhelming result is the similarity in
the neural signals so we've got a number
of ethical issues that we can think
about because of this mind technology
and probably the the one that comes to
mind first is this when if ever should
we use this mind technology is it okay
to use it to allow people to live a
happier or healthier life or or should
we think about a banning its use when I
think about the future now of this line
of work here are just a couple of
thoughts it's kind of a scary future one
of the best ways to manipulate
somebody's memory is through doctored
photographs we showed this for example
in a study that we did in which we
showed subjects some photographs of
public events and asked people whether
they remembered seeing these events in
the in the public eye and to write about
what they did remember so do you
remember when our former president shook
the hand of the former President of Iran
number of people said yes how about this
do you remember when President Bush was
vacationing during Hurricane Katrina on
the bush ranch with the famous baseball
player Roger Clemens a lot of people
said yes and one of the things we found
back then is a lot of people said yes
but whether you said yes depended on
your political orientation so the
Republic conservative Republicans were
more likely to fall for the false story
that made Obama look bad and then the
reverse was true they were somewhat less
likely to fall
for the political story that made Bush
look bad
our most recent paper along these lines
it's kind of a scary one
published with my Irish colleagues just
a month or so ago a false memory study
conducted in the context of a referendum
on abortion in Ireland Ireland has one
of the most restrictive abortion laws in
the world at least it did until last
year when there was a referendum before
then women too basically had to go fly
to England or somewhere else to get an
abortion it wasn't going to happen in
Ireland but now with this referendum the
ban on abortion was list lifted um we
showed voters in Ireland some 3,000 of
them some true ads that appeared by
those pro-choice groups or the
anti-choice groups and then we made up
some fake advertisements and stories and
again I'm not going to walk you through
the data from our paper that was just
published but just to tell you like that
Obama and Bush study that had been done
before people were commonly thinking
that they remembered these fake stories
and they were more likely to develop a
false memory and accept and believe and
remember the fake story if it made their
opponent look bad this is kind of scary
it says something about fake news but in
conjunction with a recent paper
published just at the end of last year
by Rob Nash a British memory scientist
who happens also to be my academic
great-grandson he did this study he
showed some people a photograph of the
2011 wedding of Kate and Will's and here
you see them leaving in their car after
the after the wedding ceremony that's
the actual true photo for others he
showed them a doctored photo where there
were a lot of protesters and you know
agitation in the crowd and after showing
this doctored photograph subjects
remembered the event very differently
and had different attitudes about
whether they would want to participate
in how much what their feelings were
about the whole situation but the scary
part about Rob's work is in a third
condition he the doctored photographs
were such a rotten bad Photoshop job
that the horse's feet weren't even on
the ground and even with this thing that
was just screaming its fake people were
just as influenced by that in terms of
their memories and their attitudes now
things I'm even more scary now that I've
been learning about deep fakes and if
you know anything about this you know
that there is now computer technology
which can make it look like anyone is
saying or doing anything you want them
to say or do there was an online
demonstration of this where it looked
like Obama was saying something like
crazy but it was his voice it was his
accent it was his mannerisms but it was
actually a comedian who was speaking
through this computer technology making
it look like Obama was saying the things
that he wasn't really saying and the
article a great article on this had the
title fake media is coming for our
memories so I started this and now I'll
conclude could I make you remember could
I pour these things into your mind
making you remember that as a kid you
rescued a cat or you had an attack by a
vicious animal or you committed a crime
as a teenager or you cheated in a game
last week I didn't talk about that
excellent work from some other British
scientists all of these things have been
done in scientific work published
recently in the recent past that show
the power of planting these entirely
false memories in people's minds the
LeAnn mentioned the TED talk I gave a
few years ago and I was looking for some
way to leave a take-home message if I
wanted to leave you with one thought it
would be this that really just because
somebody tells you something with
confidence that they say it with a lot
of detail they cry when they tell you
the story it doesn't mean it really
happened you need independent
corroboration to know whether you're
dealing with an authentic memory or one
that's a product of some other process
and so you know I used to love this
quote from Salvador Dali he is the one
who once said the difference between
false memories and true ones is the same
as for jewels
it's always the false ones that look the
most real the most brilliant if I were
me to meet him today which he died so
probably not but I would say you know
Sal yeah you didn't quite get it right
it's not that they're false memories are
more real and more brilliant but that
the real lesson is they can be equally
real and equally brilliant thank you for
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