Human memory isn’t perfect, and it may be even more flawed than you think. According to a study recently published in the journal Memory, about half of people may remember experiences that never happened to them when they are asked to imagine that experience. Can “false memories” really be a common occurrence?
Researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK recruited more than 400 participants for an experiment on implanted memories. Participants were told about a fictional event from their past (such as flying in a hot air balloon as a child) and asked to imagine that event repeatedly. Participants then talked about the event in the false memory, and independent raters coded the participants’ behavior based on seven categories:
- Verbal statements of “remembering”
- Acceptance of suggested information
- Elaborating beyond the suggested information
- Presence and quality of mental imagery (e.g. describing how the remembered scene looked)
- Coherence of memory narratives (i.e. the participant felt the suggested information fit with their broader personal narrative)
- Evidence of emotional experiences (i.e. people recall their emotional state during the suggested event)
- No rejection of suggested event
Based on this scoring system, the researchers found that 30 percent of participants accepted that the fictitious event described to them had happened and even elaborated on their imagined experience. An additional 23 percent of participants showed signs of accepting the even in the fake memory as real.
How Are False Memories Formed?
The University of Warwick study isn’t the first to investigate the phenomenon of false memories. In 2004, researchers at Northwestern University used MRI technology to explore how false memories form in our brains. When scanning the brains of their participants, the researchers found that the same parts of the brain associated with processing visual images were also highly activated when people pictured images based on a suggestion. And in many cases, subjects misremembered images they’d been asked to picture as images they’d seen when they took a memory test.
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| Functions in the brain. Source: nih.gov |
The Northwestern researchers theorized that there is an overlap in the parts of the brain used to perceive a physical object and used to imagine an object. As a result, picturing an event—especially picturing it repeatedly—can cause one to recall that event as something they experienced.
The Significance of False Memories
Continuing research into implanted memories is crucial, especially considering the weight memory is often given when used in court proceedings, forensic investigations, and even therapy sessions. As we learn more about the formation of false memories, those who collect eyewitness testimonies need to be aware of the ways in which prodding someone to recall an experience could cause them to remember that experience incorrectly. Memories shouldn’t be accepted as facts, as the process of creating, storing, and recalling a memory is far from infallible.
