Page 153 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

134 Mysteries of the Mind

especially those involving sexual abuse or mis- neyland with such cartoon creations as Mick-
behavior, were pushed back or repressed by ey Mouse and Donald Duck.
the psyche of the individual. Such repression Pickrell, a doctoral student in psychology,
could in later years lead to phobias or neuroses stated that the study suggested how easily a
that could be healed by psychoanalysis.
false memory can be created and just how vul-
In 2001 Michael Anderson, a psychologist nerable and malleable memory is. The experi-
at the University of Oregon, conducted a ment also demonstrated how people might
memory repression experiment with college create many of their autobiographical refer-
students. The study supported Freud’s theory ences and memories. Even the nostalgic
about the mind’s ability to repress thoughts, advertising employed by many commercial
especially painful or disturbing ones, accord- companies can lead individuals to remember
ing to Martin Conway, a psychologist at the experiences that they never really had.
University of Bristol in England. Additional
findings at the University of Oregon revealed Loftus, professor of psychology and adjunct
the results of a study of children that disclosed professor of law at the University of Washing-
that they were less likely to recall abuse at the ton, began her research into memory distor-
hands of their parents or guardians than a tion in the 1970s. When she wrote an article
stranger, quite likely because the children had on creating false memories for the September
to forget in order to cope with their daily lives. 1997 issue of Scientific American, Loftus and
her students had conducted more than 200
M Delving Deeper experiments documenting how exposure to
Ashcraft, Mark H. Human Memory and Cognition. misinformation may induce memory distor-
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994. tion. Loftus and her colleagues found that
Loftus, Elizabeth F. Memory: Surprising New Insights memories are more easily modified when a sig-
into How We Remember and Why We Forget. Read- nificant amount of time has passed between
ing, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1980. the event and the recollection. The
“New Memories Erase Old by Generating New Neu- researchers also found that individuals who
rons,” UniSci—Daily University Science News. 6 have witnessed a particular event, such as an
December 2001. [Online] http://unisci.com/ automobile accident, may have their recollec-
stories/20014/1206014.htm. tions distorted when they are later exposed to
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W. new and misleading information concerning
W. Norton, 1999. the event.
Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory—The Brain, While it is understandable that details of a
the Mind, and the Past. New York: Basic Books, particular memory might change over time,
1996. Loftus and her research associate, Pickrell,
decided to undertake the challenge of deter-
False Memories mining how false memories could be implant-
ed in an individual’s mind. Over the course of
The ease with which a false memory could be
created was demonstrated by an experiment a series of interviews, 29 percent of the 24 sub-
conducted in 2001 by University of Washing- jects claimed to remember a fictitious event
ton memory researchers Jacquie E. Pickrell that had been constructed for them by the
and Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus. About one-third of researchers. In two follow-up interviews, 25
the 120 subjects in the experiment who were percent continued to insist that the event had
exposed to a fake advertisement showing Bugs actually occurred to them. “The study pro-
Bunny at Disneyland later said that they had vides evidence that people can be led to
also met the cartoon character when they vis- remember their past in different ways,” Loftus
ited Disneyland and had even shaken his said, “and they can be coaxed into ‘remember-
hand. Such a scenario could never have ing’ entire events that never happened.”
occurred in real life, because Bugs Bunny is a Loftus’s more than 30 years of research into
cartoon character owned by Warner Brothers the various processes of memory have led her
and would not be seen walking around Dis- to suggest that false memories are often created

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