Wade and colleagues found that 50% of people came to remember details of a hot air balloon ride that never happened, after seeing a manipulated photo depicting the event.
[7] In a 1999 study with children Pezdek and Hodge found that it was easier to implant a memory of a plausible event (being lost in a mall) than an implausible one (receiving a rectal enema).
Other factors influencing the likelihood of producing false memories include imagining the events and making a source-monitoring error, specifically reality monitoring.
Sociologist Richard Ofshe considered this confession a result of suggestive questioning and decided to test his theory.
[4] Memory implantation techniques in general also illustrate how people can relatively easily come to remember things that actually never happened.
This poses a big problem for criminal confessions resulting from suggestive questioning by police and others and also for the accuracy associated with eyewitness memory.
[13] As it is not ethical to try to implant false memories of sexual abuse researchers have tried to get around this by choosing other events that are seen as negative but not traumatic.
[1] Hyman and colleagues used memory implantation techniques with emotional events such as a specific birthday party (positive) and being hospitalized overnight (negative).
[16][17] Herrmann and Yoer argue that the methods used can have negative implications for the children used such as lessen their respect for authority, be damaging for their concept of self (feel incompetent when it is pointed out that their memories are wrong) and cause stress.
[20] Thompson and Jackson propose a modified version of the suggestions from Herrmann and Yoder and say that methods for being more ethically aware when doing research with children have to be developed.
Based on these experiences he published in 1999, together with a co-author, a fundamental criticism of the concept of the unconscious, because he considered it as the main underlying cause of the implanted memories he had been dealing with:[25].... the idea of the dynamic unconscious proposes a powerful shadow mind that, unknown to its host, willfully influences the most minor thought and behavior.