Reliability of Memory
In 1992 a cargo plane crashed into an Amsterdam apartment building. Less than a year later, 55 percent of the Dutch population recalled watching TV and seeing the plane hit the building, with many able to recall specifics such as the angle of descent or whether the plane was on fire before crashing.
But there was a problem.
The event was never caught on video! The mass recollection had been pieced together from descriptions and pictures of the event.[i]
Our memories are made from bits and scraps reconstructed whenever a recollection takes place. That means each recollection from the past may trigger the addition of new details, shading of the facts, or even pruning of a few key facts. And we don't realize we’re doing so.[ii]
It's not difficult to implant a false memory. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington conducted an experiment during which she gave volunteers a booklet narrating three true stories from each volunteer's childhood plus an added false story describing being lost in the mall at age five. When asked later to write down all they could remember about the events, 25 percent were sure all four events were real![iii]
[i] Kathleen McGowan, "How Much of Your Memory Is True?" Discover Magazine, August 3, 2009, accessed May 17, 2017, http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.