Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you witnessed an event together with someone, but for some reason then remembered what happened in different ways? It would seem that you were nearby, saw the same thing, but for some reason you have different memories of the event. In fact, this happens quite often. And the whole point is that human memory is imperfect. Although we are all used to relying on our memories, our brains can change them over time.
Elizabeth Loftus is a professor of cognitive psychology and has been researching human memory for decades. She is well known in this field for her research on the plasticity of human memories, nature, and the way she creates false memories. Loftus's scientific works have repeatedly found application in the legal field. She has participated as an expert in hundreds of court cases. Her research proved that our memories can be distorted by external factors that arise after the events that have been deposited in our memory, causing the so-called effect of disinformation.
Using the case study of road traffic accidents, Loftus showed how the wording of a question posed to witnesses of an accident can lead to the fact that the testimony of these witnesses will not correspond to reality. For example, in one experiment, human volunteers, divided into several groups, were shown various videos of car accidents lasting from 5 to 30 seconds. After each video, people were asked to fill out a questionnaire, the first question of which was: "Report on the accident you just saw." This was followed by a series of specific questions about the accident. One of them read as follows: "How fast were the cars on the video moving at the moment when they crashed into each other?" True, for each group the question was formulated somewhat differently, and instead of the word "cut in" such definitions were used,as "touched", "hit", "crashed", "knocked". When the word "crashed", people attributed the highest speed, although in fact in all cases it was the same. The experiment showed that the form of the question affects the answer of the witness. Loftus suggested that this was due to changes in the presentation of the event in the memory of the subjects.
In similar experiments, Loftus obtained a similar effect. To the question: "Did you see how the headlight crashed?" - people gave a lot of false testimonies about a broken headlight, when in fact the headlight was not broken.
And as it turned out, it is really possible. Loftus, and Julia Shaw, a psychologist and psychologist at University College London, successfully demonstrated this possibility by uploading false memories into the brains of perfectly healthy people.
For example, in one study, 70 percent of subjects began to believe they had committed a crime of theft, assault, or robbery simply by using false memory techniques in conversations with people.
Scientists have been studying the nature of false memories for over a hundred years …
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As Salvador Dali once said: "The difference between false and true memories is the same as between fake and real diamonds: it is the fake ones that always look more real and sparkle brighter."
There is truth in these words that can help us explain why we so quickly begin to believe in false reports of what happened.
The idea of distorting memory dates back more than a hundred years and is associated with the work of the philosopher and psychologist Hugo Munsterberg, who at that time served as head of the psychology department at Harvard University and president of the American Psychological Association. In an article in The New York Times, Münsterberg wrote about an incident in Chicago. The police found the woman's body, and after a while detained and accused the son of a local farmer of the murder. After police interrogation, the young man confessed to having killed the woman. Even though he had an iron alibi at the time of the murder.
In the article, the psychologist reported that with each new story, the young man's story became more absurd and contradictory - it seemed that his imagination was not keeping up with what the person wanted to say. It was clear from the outside that he simply could not confirm what he was telling.
Munsterberg concluded that the guy was simply the victim of "involuntary suggestion based on assumptions" that were expressed by the police during his interrogation.
… however, detailed studies in this direction have been carried out only for the last few decades
Unfortunately, the ideas of Munsterberg at that time seemed to the public too radical, and the guy was eventually hanged a week later. Only after several decades will the idea of false and distorted memories be properly studied and will begin to be seen as a factor that can influence the readings.
Today, many would agree that false confessions can be obtained during the highly intense emotionally and physically overwhelming interrogation of a suspect. This is what those who watch the recent documentary drama "Making a Killer" from Netflix, which caused quite a stir among American society, might think about it. Whether a false confession is made under strong pressure, or whether the person really believes what he says - here you need to examine each case separately. However, Loftus is sure that you will not have reason to suspect someone that his memories were distorted and misinformed if you are not sure in advance that this really took place.
However, the solution to this question may be hidden in our biology. This was indicated by the results of the work of South Korean neuroscientists from Daegu University, who conducted a study of the brain work of 11 volunteers who had real and false memories. The scientists wanted to understand whether there would be any distinctive features in the data they received. People were asked to look at a list of words categorized. One such category, for example, was "livestock". Then they were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and began to question whether there was a discrepancy for a particular category of words. At the moment of responses, the researchers tried to determine changes in blood flow in different parts of the subjects' brains. The experiment showed that people,who were confident in their answer (and the answer actually turned out to be correct), blood flow increased in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that plays an important role in memory consolidation (the transition of short-term memory to long-term memory). And when the participants were confident in their answers, but the answers actually turned out to be incorrect (which happened in about 20 percent of cases), then an increase in blood flow was observed in the frontal part of the brain, which is responsible for the so-called "feeling of déjà vu."then an increase in blood flow was observed in the frontal part of the brain, which is responsible for the so-called "sense of déjà vu".then an increase in blood flow was observed in the frontal part of the brain, which is responsible for the so-called "sense of déjà vu".
The theory of fuzzy traces helps to explain this phenomenon
One theory that tries to explain to us why our brains can fill with false memories is called the "fuzzy footprint theory." The term was coined by researchers and psychologists Charles Brainerd and Valerie F. Reina. Using this theory, scientists tried for the first time to explain the work of the so-called Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, or DRM for short. It sounds scary at first glance, but in fact it is named after its creators, scientists James Dease, Henry Rodiger and Kathleen McDermott, who tried to reproduce a laboratory analogue of déjà vu back in the 60s.
In the DRM study, subjects were offered a large list of words, for example: "pillow", "mattress", "bed", "chair", "alarm clock", "nap", "nightmare", "pajamas", "night light" and so on. Further. All of these words belong to one category - the sleep process. But the word "sleep" is not on this list. When, after a while, the subjects were asked whether the word "sleep" was on the list, most of them "remembered" that it was. Of course, the effect obtained is not very similar to the real déja vu, but the authors insisted on the identity of the mechanisms of their occurrence.
The theory distinguishes two types of memory, and each has its own advantages
At first, scientists suggested that the phenomenon is somehow connected with the construction of an associative series between words. However, when this possibility was taken into account in experiments, the researchers obtained the same results.
The theory of fuzzy traces, in turn, reveals and promotes the idea of the existence of two types of memory: reproductive and semantic. When the reproductive memory is activated, we can quickly, accurately and in detail recall something from the past. When the semantic one comes into play, then we have only vague (indistinct) recalling the past events - hence, by the way, the name of the theory.
Fuzzy trail theory is able to correctly predict the dramatic effect of aging on our memories, called the developmental reversal effect. This means that when you grow up and move from childhood to adulthood, not only the efficiency of your reproductive memory increases (you can recall the events that have taken place in more detail), but at the same time the dominance of semantic memory grows. In practice, this means that the more likely you will feel confident that there was a particular word in the list (as in the example that is described above), although in fact it never was there, and at the same time you will remember the entire list.
In general, this means that your memory does not necessarily deteriorate as you age. It's just that your brain becomes more selective about finding suitable meanings, slowing down the speed of selection. Since this theory was presented, it has been validated in over 50 other studies by other scientists.
False memories aren't always a problem
At first, many were rather skeptical about this theory, explaining that adults are superior to children in everything. But this attitude toward theory may have arisen from the fact that we so often rely on our brain, and any suggestion that it becomes less accurate as we age looks like a daunting prospect for us.
In reality, despite the fact that all of us will eventually show false memories, we will not experience any problems from this, says Reina. From an evolutionary point of view, in this inevitably expected transition to semantic memory of all of us, one can even find its advantages. For example, in her research, Reyna found that semantic memory helps people make safer decisions about taking risks.
The Allais paradox, used in decision theory and named after the economist and Nobel laureate Maurice Allais, helps explain this. The paradox can be formulated in the form of a choice between two options, in each of which one or another amount of money is received with some probability. Individuals are offered a choice of one decision from two pairs of risky decisions. In the first case, in situation A there is a 100% certainty of winning 1 million francs, and in situation B there is a 10% probability of winning 2.5 million francs, 89% of winning 1 million francs, and 1% of winning nothing. In the second case, the same individuals are asked to make a choice between situation C and D. In situation C there is a 10% probability of winning 5 million francs and 90% of winning nothing, and in situation D 11% is a probability of winning 1 million francs and 89% - win nothing.
Allé found that the vast majority of individuals in these conditions would prefer the choice of situation A in the first pair and situation C in the second. This result was perceived as paradoxical. Within the framework of the existing hypothesis, an individual who preferred choice A in the first pair should choose situation D in the second pair, and who chose B in the second pair should give preference to choice C. Alla explained this paradox mathematically accurately. His main conclusion was that the rational agent prefers absolute reliability.
The psychologist says that the existence of false memories can make people worry about how they supposedly see the world around them differently, but this is not a problem. Unlike real negative age-related problems, which can also manifest itself in the form of a decrease in memory efficiency, false memories in some cases actually help us make safer and more conscious choices in certain things. Therefore, Reina points out that false memory should not be confused with dementia.
Semantic memory is just another way our brain shows how ready it is to adapt to the external environment. Again, do not confuse false memories with dementia (“senile marasmus”, in the popular way). As long as a person does not experience any problems, then there is no need to worry about this, the psychologist believes.
Nikolay Khizhnyak