False Memory

Many people imagine human memory as a kind of archive with neatly organized folders labeled “keep forever.” The only problem, they think, is finding the right folder, but even that can supposedly be solved with special techniques, hypnosis, and similar methods. This, to put it mildly, is not quite true.

Early Experiments on False Memory

The first experiments on implanting false memories were conducted in the 1990s by Elizabeth Loftus. She gave 24 participants brief (one-paragraph) descriptions of four events that supposedly happened to them between the ages of 4 and 6. Three of these stories were true (provided by the participants’ relatives), while the fourth—about getting lost in a supermarket as a child—was completely made up. Participants were told they were taking part in a study on the ability to recall childhood memories in detail. They were asked to first write down, and then a week later describe in an interview, the details of the four stories as they remembered them.

Out of 24 participants, six not only “remembered” getting lost in the supermarket, but also recounted the episode in vivid detail, although they noted that their memories of it were a bit fuzzier than the other three events. Nevertheless, an outside observer could not tell from their speech which of the four events was false. Later experiments showed that, depending on the conditions, some form of false memory implantation like in Loftus’s experiment occurs in 20–40% of participants.

The Balloon Ride Experiment

The most successful result came from Kimberley Wade in 2002. In her experiment, instead of a story, she used a doctored photograph showing the participant supposedly taking a hot air balloon ride as a child. As a result, about 50% of participants developed full or partial memories of this balloon ride—which never actually happened.

The Paul Ingram Case

One of the most famous cases involved Paul Ingram, who was accused by his own children of regularly abusing them between the ages of 4 and 12. The accusations surfaced years after the alleged events, so there was no physical evidence. Ingram denied everything, but after five months of police interrogation, he suddenly confessed to all the charges, including not only abusing his children but also participating in satanic rituals and the murder of 25 children.

Psychologist Richard Ofshe, intrigued by the case, conducted an original experiment: he fabricated a story that Ingram’s children also claimed he forced them to have sex with each other. At first, Ingram denied these events, but after a few hours, he began to “remember” the described incidents and eventually wrote a three-page confession. When later told that these events were completely made up, Ingram refused to believe it. This case clearly shows that almost any false memory can be implanted, even extremely negative ones. And, of course, this isn’t just about Ingram’s own false memories, but likely also those of his children (as indicated by the fact that they only “remembered” the abuse as adults and kept recalling new details during the trial).

How Accurate Are Real Memories?

Another interesting experiment on the accuracy of real memories was conducted by Ulric Neisser. In 1986, the day after the Challenger disaster, he asked several people where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. It’s believed that circumstances involving strong emotional shock are imprinted clearly in memory. Some time later, Neisser repeated the same survey with the same people—and almost none of their later accounts matched their original ones. In fact, when shown the recordings of their first answers, people simply didn’t believe them. Amusingly, the same thing happened to Neisser himself: he vividly remembered learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor during a baseball game broadcast—even though it’s a documented fact that there were no baseball broadcasts that day.

The Nature of Human Memory

Human memory is not an archive with “keep forever” folders, nor is it a documentary film reel. It’s a set of neural pathways that are constantly influenced by stimuli. That’s why our memory is changeable and can reproduce things that never happened in physical reality, but existed in our psychological reality.