Implanting Memories for Early Events in People’s Lives

My heart sunk when I read the chapter on “Everyday Memory and Memory Errors” in Goldstein’s text, Cognitive Psychology.  Goldstein states that given we know memories can be created by suggestion, it is easy to see how someone could be subject to the creation of a false memory for abuse (Goldstein, 233).  I think we all wonder sometimes if memories from our childhoods are completely accurate or somehow influenced by the stories told to us by our relatives.  I know for a fact that my parent’s recall of events and my recall are not even close.  Mostly, these memories are not critical or vital to my well-being.  However, there is one particular event that occurred in my wife’s family that speaks to the importance of psychologists understanding memory and its suggestibility.

One of my wife’s relatives was struggling with drug abuse and delinquency during her young adulthood.  She started seeing a therapist who fell into the category of trauma-memory oriented therapy.  These therapists tell their patients that memories of abuse can be buried in the subconscious and usually suggests some visualization exercises to help unlock the lost memory.  This relative in her twenties with the help of her therapist remembered that her uncle had sexually molested her.  She told her mother who thus told her sister that her daughter had accused her husband of molesting her when she was a teen.  This came as a shock to the entire family and made little sense given there was no evidence to support such a claim.  No criminal charges were filed, however, the woman’s mother felt she had to side with her daughter, and the mother’s sister defended her husband.  The sisters, who were once very close, no longer speak to each other.  The family was literally torn in two.  The impact of the allegation was devastating to many people, and to this day, no one knows the truth.

Further emphasizing the importance that memory is suggestible, Goldstein points out there is no test or procedure that can accurately differentiate between real and false memories (Goldstein, 233).  Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus from the University of Washington has done much research in the area of implanting false memories.  She states, first, there are social demands on an individual to remember which could be pressure from a therapist or researcher, and then, second, memory construction by imagining events is encouraged, and then, finally, the person may be encouraged not to think about whether their constructions are real or not (Loftus, 1997).  Another danger of knowing that false memories of childhood abuse can be implanted in adults is that people who have been actually abused may not be believed which could further the trauma of the actual abuse.

Another aspect of the suggestibility of memory is imagination inflation.  Loftus speaks of the imagination inflation effect.  The act of imagination makes events seem more familiar and when the source of information is especially distant such as a childhood experience, the likelihood of misremembering is high (Loftus, 1997).  Goldstein discusses research that supports the notion that people commit memory errors due to familiarity quite frequently (Goldstein, 2011).  One can easily imagine the more you told your story of abuse, the easier it would become to believe it.

Memory is suggestible, and it is incredibly important for psychologists to understand this concept.  Questions that need to be addressed by future research include what types of people are susceptible to memory suggestibility and are there ways to tell if someone is remembering an actual event or false memory.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Loftus, Elizabeth F. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277(3). Retrieved from https://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

 

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