Person
Elizabeth Loftus
Memory researcher — false memory and misinformation effect
Psychologist whose research established how easily false memories can be created or existing memories distorted through suggestion, widely cited by Charan Ranganath in his own work on memory reconstruction. Her studies include the "lost in the mall" memory-implantation technique (see Loftus Lost-in-the-Mall Study), the "stop sign" misinformation-effect study on eyewitness testimony (see Loftus Stop-Sign Misinformation Study), and a 2010 collaboration with Slate testing false memories of fabricated news events (see Loftus Slate Fake-News Memory Study).
Personally experienced the same phenomenon she studies. At a family gathering, a relative insisted with total confidence that Loftus herself (not her aunt, as Loftus had always remembered) had discovered her mother's body after her mother's drowning death when Loftus was 14. In the days following, Loftus began recalling vivid, specific details supporting the relative's false version (her mother floating face-down, firemen arriving) — before the relative called back to apologize, having confirmed with other family members that Loftus's aunt had in fact found the body. Loftus described being shocked less by the false memory itself than by the fact that, as the world's leading expert on exactly this phenomenon, she still wasn't immune to it (see Loftus Own Mother's-Death Misremembering Case).
Author of The Myth of Repressed Memories, cited as further reading on the same topic covered in Episode 232.
Discussed in
- Episode 232 — 232-can-you-implant-fake-memories