British scientists have found that about half of people tend to take false memories as their own. The research results are published in the journal Memory.
False memories are a phenomenon in which real events of the past are combined with fictional ones or replaced by them. Although the phenomenon is common in mental illness, it can occur in healthy people. Thus, false memories can arise as a result of psychotherapy (in particular, under hypnosis), during interrogations and other situations when an authority figure expresses a point of view in an affirmative form. At the same time, the study of the phenomenon is difficult due to the difference in approaches to assessing the quality of implantation of such memories.
In the new work, scientists from the University of Warwick conducted a meta-analysis of eight scientific publications related to false memories and proposed a new methodology for assessing the indicator. In total, the authors reviewed cases of 423 volunteers who had previously participated in recall experiments. Evaluation of the quality of implantation was carried out according to seven criteria: acceptance of the approval; the ability to develop it; imagery; sequence; emotionality; the ability to retell false events; uncriticality.
The results showed that the method allows distinguishing false memories from real ones with high reliability. In particular, in the examined subjects, stable false memories arose in 30.4 percent of cases: they perceived an induced memory (for example, a trip in a balloon) as something that actually happened to them, could describe it in detail and compare it with something. Another 23 percent of the participants accepted false memories to some extent and generally also believed they happened.
According to scientists, the data obtained indicate the need for further study of the phenomenon. In addition, the prevalence of false memories casts doubt on established practice in a number of industries, including the practice of psychotherapy, interrogation of witnesses and suspects, and medicine. Particularly noteworthy in this context is the possibility of inducing false memories by the mass media (media) through the repetition of various (distorted) facts - such memories can be collective.
Denis Strigun