False memory
The false memory phenomenon was initially investigated by psychological pioneers Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud.
[3] In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer conducted a study[4] to investigate the effects of language on the development of false memory.
[6] Loftus's meta-analysis on language manipulation studies suggested the misinformation effect taking hold on the recall process and products of the human memory.
[7] The strength of verbs used in conversation or questioning also has a similar effect on the memory; for example – the words "met", "bumped", "collided", "crashed", or "smashed" would all cause people to remember a car accident at different levels of intensity.
The words "bumped", "hit", "grabbed", "smacked", or "groped" would all paint a different picture of a person in the memory of an observer of sexual harassment if questioned about it later.
The results surprisingly showed that those who watched the video of the robbery actually recalled more information more accurately than those who were live on the scene.
Broome reported that hundreds of other people had written about having the same memory of Mandela's death,[13] some while he was still alive, and she speculated that the phenomenon could be evidence of parallel realities.
[14] One well-documented example of shared false memories comes from a 2010 study that examined people familiar with the clock at Bologna Centrale railway station, which was damaged in a bombing in August 1980.
[23][26] Likewise, false memories of Mandela's death could be explained as the subject conflating him with Steve Biko, another prominent South African anti-apartheid activist, who died in prison in 1977.
[27][28][29] Memes about the Mandela effect and associated online jokes about a time traveler altering the past and turning the current era into "a glitch" became popular in the United States in 2016.
[26][37][36][38] The fuzzy-trace theory, proposed by Valerie Reyna and Charles Brainerd in the 1990's, suggests that information can be stored in two different ways: verbatim and gist.
The fuzzy-trace theory relates to false memory because studies have found that when information is stored as a gist representation, it is more prone to manipulation.
Loftus then stated that a theory needed to be created for complex visual experiences where the construction hypothesis plays a significantly more important role than situational strength.
High dissociation may be associated with habitual use of lax response criteria for source decisions due to frequent interruption of attention or consciousness.
These data, however, do not directly address the issue of whether adults' or their parents' attachment styles are related to false childhood memories.
Such data nevertheless suggest that greater attachment avoidance may be associated with a stronger tendency to form false memories of childhood.
False memory is an important part of psychological research because of the ties it has to a large number of mental disorders, such as PTSD.
[1][57] Therapists who subscribe to the theories underlying recovered-memory therapy point to a wide variety of common problems, ranging from eating disorders to sleeplessness, as evidence of repressed memories of sexual abuse.
[58] Psychotherapists tried to reveal "repressed memories" in mental therapy patients through "hypnosis, guided imagery, dream interpretation and narco-analysis".
The legal phenomena developed in the 1980s, with civil suits alleging child sexual abuse on the basis of "memories" recovered during psychotherapy.
[medical citation needed] Putative memories recovered through therapy have become more difficult to distinguish between simply being repressed or not having existed in the first place.
[61][62][63] A recent report indicates that similar strategies may have produced false memories in several therapies in the century before the modern controversy on the topic which took place in the 1980s and 1990s.
It was suggested that the therapist, Isabella, had implanted one of the sexual abuse memories in Ramona after use of the hypnotic drug sodium amytal.
With the support of her husband and primary care physician, Berry eventually realized that her memories were false and filed a suit for malpractice.
The suit brought to light the mother's manipulation of mental health professionals to convince Berry that she had been sexually abused by her father.
Circuit Court South Dakota, states that therapist Lynda O'Connor-Davis had an improper relationship with Berry, both during and after her treatment.
[82] A 2016 study surveyed the public's attitude regarding the ethics of planting false memories as an attempt to influence healthy behavior.
Their reasons against are that the ends do not justify the means (32%), potential for abuse (14%), lack of consent (10%), practical doubts (8%), better alternative (7%), and free will (3%).
Of those who thought implanting false memories would be acceptable, 36% believed the end justified the means, with other reasons being increasing treatment options (6%), people need support (6%), no harm would be done (6%), and it's no worse than alternatives (5%).
[84] Other positive traits associated with false memory indicate that individuals have superior organizational processes, heightened creativity, and prime solutions for insight based problems.
