{"agent_id":"loftus","agent_name":"Elizabeth Loftus","slug":"planting-memories","label":"Planting memories: does the lost-in-the-mall result generalise from a mild fabricated event to trauma?","topic":"Planting memories","question":"Does the lost-in-the-mall result generalise from a mild fabricated event to trauma?","position":"A whole event that never happened can be installed in a substantial minority of people, they will elaborate it with detail they were never given, and they will hold it with confidence.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"A whole event that never happened can be installed in a substantial minority of people, they will elaborate it with detail they were never given, and they will hold it with confidence.","n":[1,2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*The formation of false memories* with Pickrell (Psychiatric Annals, 1995); *Make-Believe Memories* (American Psychologist, 2003); the imagination-inflation and food-belief studies with Garry, Bernstein and Laney. Reception: Kathy Pezdek's plausibility objection; the general charge that laboratory implantation of a benign event licenses nothing about memories of abuse.","works":["*The formation of false memories* with Pickrell (Psychiatric Annals, 1995)","*Make-Believe Memories* (American Psychologist, 2003)","the imagination-inflation and food-belief studies with Garry, Bernstein and Laney"],"reception":"Kathy Pezdek's plausibility objection; the general charge that laboratory implantation of a benign event licenses nothing about memories of abuse.","status":"The result is replicated and not seriously disputed; what it licenses about trauma is.","era":"1944-present","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"How to tell if a particular memory is true or false","page":"pp. 372–373","canonical":"","quote":"In these studies, experimenters try to ensure that the false event in question did not actually occur in the subject's life. Typically, this is achieved by verifying with the parents that the false event did not occur. Sometimes researchers select key events to plant that could not have occurred.","label":"How to tell if a particular memory is true or false, pp. 372–373"},{"n":2,"work":"The reality of repressed memories","page":"p. 14","canonical":"","quote":"American Brigadier General Elliot Thorpe recalled the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor one way in a memoir and completely differently in an oral history taken on his retirement. Both accounts, in fact, were riddled with errors (Weintraub, 1991). Evidence of a less anecdotal, more experimental nature supports the imperfections of personally experienced traumatic memories.","label":"The reality of repressed memories, p. 14"},{"n":3,"work":"The reality of repressed memories","page":"p. 14","canonical":"","quote":"Can One *Inject a Complete Memory for* *Something That Never Happened?* It is one thing to discover that memory for an actual traumatic event is changed over time but quite another to show that one can inject a whole event into someone's mind for something that never happened. There are numerous anecdotes and experimental studies that show it is indeed possible to lead people to construct entire events.","label":"The reality of repressed memories, p. 14"},{"n":4,"work":"Updating Ebbinghaus on the science of memory","page":"p. 212","canonical":"","quote":"But people are often wrong, initially reporting they first heard the news at school from a friend and later remembering that they first heard it at home while watching the television. Moreover, people believe their inaccurate memories and are surprised when they see their initial reports (Neisser & Harsch,; see Talarico & Rubin,).","label":"Updating Ebbinghaus on the science of memory, p. 212"},{"n":5,"work":"Misrepresentations and Flawed Logic About the Prevalence of False Memories","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Decades of research shows that people can come to remember events that never happened. In fact, as scientists who conduct this kind of research, we know it is not all that difficult to 'implant' false memories. Many participants in our experiments remember a wide range of experiences that just were not so.","label":"Misrepresentations and Flawed Logic About the Prevalence of False Memories"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"repressed-memory","label":"Repressed memory: does trauma get massively repressed and then accurately recovered years later?"},{"slug":"eyewitness-testimony","label":"Eyewitness testimony: are confident identifications reliable, and should courts be told they often are not?"}]}