Lasting false beliefs and their behavioral consequences

False beliefs and memories can affect people's attitudes, at least in the short term. But can they produce real changes in behavior? This study explored whether falsely suggesting to subjects that they had experienced a food-related event in their childhood would lead to a change in their behavior shortly after the suggestion and up to 4 months later. We falsely suggested to 180 subjects that, as children, they had gotten ill after eating egg salad. Results showed that, after this manipulation, a significant minority of subjects came to believe they had experienced this childhood event even though they had initially denied having experienced it. This newfound autobiographical belief was accompanied by the intent to avoid egg salad, and also by significantly reduced consumption of egg-salad sandwiches, both immediately and 4 months after the false suggestion. The false suggestion of a childhood event can lead to persistent false beliefs that have lasting behavioral consequences.     

The consequences of suggesting false childhood food events

We combined data across eight published experiments (N = 1369) to examine the formation and consequences of false autobiographical beliefs and memories. Our path models revealed that the formation of false autobiographical belief fully mediated the pathway between suggesting to people that they had experienced a positive or negative food-related event in the past and current preference for that food. Suggestion indirectly affected intention to eat the food via change in autobiographical belief. The development of belief with and without memory produced similar changes in food preferences and behavior intention, indicating that belief in the event drives changes in suggestion-related attitudes. Finally, positive suggestions (e.g., “you loved asparagus the first time you tried it”) yielded stronger effects than negative suggestions (e.g., “you got sick eating egg salad”). These findings show that false autobiographical suggestions lead to the development of autobiographical beliefs, which in turn, have consequences for one's attitudes and behaviors.     

The role of emotional elaboration in the creation of false memories

Two experiments employed an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to examine the effects of emotional elaboration on the creation of false memories for suggested events. The results of both experiments converge in showing that reflectively elaborating on the emotional consequences of suggested events increases both false belief and false memory in having witnessed the suggested events. Moreover, the results also showed that emotional elaboration leads to higher false memory than other types of meaningful elaboration, thus providing evidence that the emotional content of the elaboration plays a role in promoting false memory development. The results have several real‐world implications for forensic and therapeutic interviews. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

False claims about false memory research

Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. (2007). What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study "False memory," and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been (1) misusing the term "false memory," (2) relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and (3) misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors.     

Age-related binding deficits and the content of false memories

The authors examined effects of age-related binding deficits on feature information in false memories for imagined objects (e.g., lollipop) that were similar in shape to seen objects (e.g., magnifying glass). In Experiment 1, location memory for seen objects was lower in older than younger adults and lower still in old-old than young-old adults. Imagined objects, when falsely called seen, were less likely to be attributed to the location of similar seen objects (i.e., congruent attributions) by old-old than young-old adults. In Experiment 2, for younger adults, displaying seen objects for less time (1 s vs. 4 s) reduced both location memory for seen objects and congruent attributions for false memories. Thus, binding deficits may influence the specific content of false memories.     

Emotional content of true and false memories

Many people believe that emotional memories (including those that arise in therapy) are particularly likely to represent true events because of their emotional content. But is emotional content a reliable indicator of memory accuracy? The current research assessed the emotional content of participants' pre-existing (true) and manipulated (false) memories for childhood events. False memories for one of three emotional childhood events were planted using a suggestive manipulation and then compared, along several subjective dimensions, with other participants' true memories. On most emotional dimensions (e.g., how emotional was this event for you?), true and false memories were indistinguishable. On a few measures (e.g., intensity of feelings at the time of the event), true memories were more emotional than false memories in the aggregate, yet true and false memories were equally likely to be rated as uniformly emotional. These results suggest that even substantial emotional content may not reliably indicate memory accuracy.     

Emotional content of true and false memories

Many people believe that emotional memories (including those that arise in therapy) are particularly likely to represent true events because of their emotional content. But is emotional content a reliable indicator of memory accuracy? The current research assessed the emotional content of participants’ pre-existing (true) and manipulated (false) memories for childhood events. False memories for one of three emotional childhood events were planted using a suggestive manipulation and then compared, along several subjective dimensions, with other participants’ true memories. On most emotional dimensions (e.g., how emotional was this event for you?), true and false memories were indistinguishable. On a few measures (e.g., intensity of feelings at the time of the event), true memories were more emotional than false memories in the aggregate, yet true and false memories were equally likely to be rated as uniformly emotional. These results suggest that even substantial emotional content may not reliably indicate memory accuracy.     

Recovering memories of trauma: A view from the laboratory

The controversy over the validity of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been extraordinarily bitter. Yet data on cognitive functioning in people reporting repressed and recovered memories of trauma have been strikingly scarce. Recent laboratory studies have been designed to test hypotheses about cognitive mechanisms that ought to be operative if people can repress and recover memories of trauma or if they can form false memories of trauma. Contrary to clinical lore, these studies have shown that people reporting CSA histories are not characterized by a superior ability to forget trauma-related material. Other studies have shown that individuals reporting recovered memories of either CSA or abduction by space aliens are characterized by heightened proneness to form false memories in certain laboratory tasks. Although cognitive psychology methods cannot distinguish true memories from false ones, these methods can illuminate mechanisms for remembering and forgetting among people reporting histories of trauma.     

Public Attitudes on the Ethics of Deceptively Planting False Memories to Motivate Healthy Behavior

Researchers have proposed that planting false memories could have positive behavioral consequences. The idea of deceptively planting ‘beneficial’ false memories outside of the laboratory raises important ethical questions, but how might the general public appraise this moral dilemma? In two studies, participants from the USA and UK read about a fictional ‘false‐memory therapy’ that led people to adopt healthy behaviors. Participants then reported their attitudes toward the acceptability of this therapy, via scale‐rating (both studies) and open‐text (study 2) responses. The data revealed highly divergent responses to this contentious issue, ranging from abject horror to unqualified enthusiasm. Moreover, the responses shed light on conditions that participants believed would make the therapy less or more ethical. Whether or not deceptively planting memories outside the lab could ever be justifiable, these studies add valuable evidence to scientific and societal debates on neuroethics, whose relevance to memory science is increasingly acute. Copyright © 2016 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Generative processing and false memories: when there is no cost

Encoding manipulations (e.g., levels of processing) that facilitate retention often result in greater numbers of false memories, a pattern referred to as the more is less effect (M. P. Toglia, J. S. Neuschatz, & K. A. Goodwin, 1999). The present experiments explored false memories under generative processing. In Experiments 1-3, using Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists with items that were either read or generated, the authors found recognition and recall tests indicated generation effects for true memories but no increases in false memories (i.e., generation at no cost). In Experiment 4, in a departure from the DRM methodology, a cuing procedure resulted in a more is less pattern for congruous generation,and a no cost pattern for incongruous generation. This highlights the critical distinction between these encoding contexts.     

Working memory predicts the rejection of false memories

The relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and false memories in the memory conjunction paradigm was explored. Previous research using other paradigms has shown that individuals high in WMC are not as likely to experience false memories as low-WMC individuals, the explanation being that high-WMC individuals are better able to engage in source monitoring. In the memory conjunction paradigm participants are presented at study with parent words (e.g., eyeglasses, whiplash). At test, in addition to being presented with targets and foils, participants are presented with lures that are composed of previously studied features (e.g., eyelash). It was found that high-WMC individuals had lower levels of false recognition than low-WMC individuals. Furthermore, recall-to-reject responses were analysed (e.g., "I know I didn't see eyelash because I remember seeing eyeglasses") and it was found that high-WMC individuals were more likely to utilise this memory editing strategy, providing direct evidence that one reason that high-WMC individuals are not as prone to false memories is because they are better able to engage in source monitoring.     

错误记忆的可植入性

错误记忆具有可植入性。植入性错误记忆常常与真实记忆发生混淆, 成为个体经验的一部分, 进而影响人们的思想、态度和行为。植入错误记忆的范式主要有错误反馈技术、想象膨胀、照片修改范式以及盛情-欺骗范式。研究表明, 植入性错误记忆发生在饮食、消费以及攻击行为等活动中。植入性错误记忆与真实记忆的辨别主要包括结果、情绪、持续性以及生理机制四个方面。植入性错误记忆的解释主要有联结观和多阶段模型。目前研究存在许多问题, 包括要求特征、认知反应、范式选取以及实验伦理等。未来研究需要对植入错误记忆方法的有效性、个体特征与错误记忆植入的匹配、植入性错误记忆行为结果的测量以及实际应用等进行探讨。     

The unified theory of repression

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). "Repression" was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of "unbearable" mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms ("repression in the widest sense"). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other "memory illusions" are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions.     

Recognition Practice Results in a Generalizable Skill in Older Adults: Decreased Intrusion Errors to Novel Objects Belonging to Practiced Categories

Accessing memories is often accompanied by both positive and negative consequences. For example, practice recognizing some visual images held in memory can improve memory for the practiced images and hurt memory for related images (i.e., recognition‐induced forgetting). However, visual stimuli have been shown to improve memory for older adults by decreasing false memories. This suggests that older adults may be immune to recognition‐induced forgetting and that recognition practice may decrease susceptibility to intrusion errors. We first tested the hypothesis that older adults are immune to recognition‐induced forgetting. We found older adults exhibit recognition‐induced forgetting. Next, we tested the hypothesis that recognition practice decreases older adult's rates of intrusion errors. We found lower intrusion errors for novel objects from practiced categories. This represents a generalizable learning effect; practice recognizing a target object (e.g., your pill bottle) improves the rejection of new lures (e.g., identifying the pill bottle that is not yours).Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interviewing Witnesses: Forced Confabulation and Confirmatory Feedback Increase False Memories

In two experiments, adults who witnessed a videotaped event subsequently engaged in face-to-face interviews during which they were forced to confabulate information about the events they had seen. The interviewer selectively reinforced some of the participants' confabulated responses by providing confirmatory feedback (e.g., "Yes, _is the correct answer") and provided neutral (uninformative) feedback for the remaining confabulated responses (e.g., "O.K. _"). One week later, participants developed false memories for the events they had earlier confabulated knowingly. However, confirmatory feedback increased false memory for forcibly confabulated events, increased confidence in those false memories, and increased the likelihood that participants would freely report the confabulated events 1 to 2 months later. The results illustrate the powerful role of social-motivational factors in promoting the development of false memories.     

Creating false memories for brand names

Using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants are presented with lists of associated words (e.g., bed, awake, night etc). Subsequently, they reliably have false memories for related but non‐presented words (e.g. SLEEP). The present study investigated whether false memories could be created for brand names (e.g. Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and TESCO) using the DRM paradigm and whether the effect was reduced if stimuli were presented in brand appropriate fonts compared with a plain font. Participants were presented with lists of brand names in plain or brand appropriate fonts, followed by a distractor task or free recall. Finally, they had a recognition task. Both false recall and false recognition of non‐presented brand names occurred. Brand specific fonts at study had no effect on recall but increased overall recognition. There was considerable variability in levels of false recall and false recognition amongst lists and across participants and reasons for this are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reported serial positions of true and illusory memories in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott paradigm

One of the easiest ways to induce illusory memories in the laboratory is to use the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word-list paradigm. Researchers have used this paradigm not only to study people's memories of stimuli that were not actually presented, but also to study the phenomenological qualities of these illusions. In four experiments, the current investigation explored a phenomenological quality of illusory memories that has received almost no attention, specifically, temporality. A serial position task was incorporated into the DRM paradigm to examine temporal attributes of participants' true and false memories. Effects of list strength, presentation order, and types of warnings were examined. Results showed consistent serial position responses for true and false memories. However, only responses for illusory memories were affected by manipulations at study. The current findings thus lend support to encoding-based explanations of false recollections.     

Creating nonbelieved memories for bizarre actions using an imagination inflation procedure

The current experiments examined the creation of nonbelieved true and false memories after imagining bizarre and familiar actions using the imagination inflation procedure (Goff & Roediger, 1998). In both experiments, participants took part in three sessions. In Session 1, participants had to perform or imagine simple familiar actions (e.g., “stir the water with the spoon”) and bizarre actions (e.g., “balance the spoon on your nose”). A day later, participants needed to imagine simple actions of which some were new actions, and some were old actions that appeared in the first session. After a week, the participants completed a recognition task. For those actions that were correctly or incorrectly remembered as having been performed, the participant was challenged that the action was not performed in order to evoke nonbelieved true and false memories. In general, we found that the imagination inflation procedure can successfully induce participants to produce nonbelieved memories. In Study 1, we successfully induced nonbelieved memories for bizarre actions, although in general nonbelieved memory rates were low. In Study 2, more participants formed nonbelieved memories for bizarre actions than for familiar actions. Also, we found that especially belief was more susceptible to revision when memories were challenged than recollection. In two experiments, we showed that nonbelieved memories can successfully be induced for both familiar and bizarre actions.     

False memories and fantastic beliefs: 15 years of the DRM illusion

This article reviews research using the Deese/Roediger—McDermott (DRM) associative memory illusion, whereby people falsely remember words that were not presented. This illusion has broadly influenced basic theories of memory in cognitive psychology and neuroscience and naturally raises the question as to how these theories apply to more complex autobiographical memories. Some applicability is evident from research linking individual differences in the DRM illusion to false autobiographical memories (e.g., misremembering public events) and fantastic autobiographical beliefs (e.g., memories from past lives). But which aspects generalize? Here it is argued that a process—oriented approach is needed in order to answer this question. Many productive years of DRM research indicate that multiple and often opposing psychological processes cause even the most basic false memories. In light of these discoveries, more researchers need to use methods that isolate these component processes if the goal is to understand false memories both in the lab and in life.     

The persistence of false beliefs

Do false beliefs last? To explore this question, this study planted false beliefs or memories of a childhood experience with asparagus. We found that these false beliefs had consequences for subjects, when assessed directly after the suggestive manipulation. Moreover, subjects were brought back two weeks later to see if their false beliefs persisted. After two weeks, subjects' confidence in their new memories, and the consequences of those memories were diminished, but not extinguished. These false beliefs were found to be somewhat weaker than other subjects' true beliefs for the same events. Another novel finding was that the manipulation was sufficiently powerful to affect actual food choices.