Later, they might remember the content of the memory but not its source and mistakenly attribute the recalled information to a real experience.
[1][4] In 1996, Elizabeth Loftus, Maryanne Garry, Charles Manning, and Steven Sherman, conducted the original imagination inflation study.
In 1998, Lyn Goff and Henry Roediger used a different method to study imagination inflation effect for events that could be confirmed.
[8] Another found an effect when people imagined a highly unusual action such as kissing a vending machine or lying on a couch and talking to Sigmund Freud.
There is evidence that source-monitoring framework, the familiarity misattribution theory, and the effects of sensory elaboration contribute to the formation of false memories through imagination inflation.
[11] Thomas et al. argue that perceptual components of imagining events confuse actual lived memories because of elaboration.
The results of the study argue that elaboration (in the form of vivid sensory details) leads to increased formation of false memories.
This practice has been suggested as another cause of self-generated false confessions because it forces an innocent suspect to create a believable narrative of their own guilt.
[4][15] This is supported by research in which people explained how a false childhood event could have occurred, and, after, became more confident that it had really happened.
[16] That is, events with confidence ratings at the extreme (low or high) ends of the scale at the first time of measurement happened to have such scores due only to observational error, so they became more moderate at post-test.