New study shows false memories affect behavior

Do you know someone who claims to remember their first day of kindergarten? Or a trip they took as a toddler? While some people may be able to recall trivial details from the past, laboratory research shows that the human memory can be remarkably fragile and even inventive.

In fact, people can easily create false memories of their past and a new study shows that such memories can have long-term effects on our behavior.

Psychologists Elke Geraerts of the University of St. Andrews and Maastricht University, Daniel Bernstein of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the University of Washington, Harald Merckelbach, Christel Linders, and Linsey Raymaekers of Maastricht University, and Elizabeth F. Loftus of University of California, Irvine, found that it is possible to change long-term behaviors using a simple suggestive technique.

In a series of experiments, the researchers falsely suggested that participants had become ill after eating egg salad as a child. Afterwards, the researchers offered different kinds of sandwiches to the participants, including ones with an egg salad filling. Four months later, the participants were asked to be in a separate study in which they evaluated egg salad as well as other foods. They were then given the same kinds of sandwiches that had been offered to them four months earlier.

Interestingly, participants who were told they had become ill as a child after eating egg salad showed a distinct change in attitudes and behavior towards this food after the experiment. They not only gave the food lower evaluations than participants who did not develop false memories or were in the control group, but they also avoided egg salad sandwiches more than any of the other participants four months later.

The results, appearing in the August issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, "clearly demonstrate that false suggestions about childhood events can profoundly change people's attitudes and behavior," wrote the authors.

These findings have significant implications for the authenticity of reports of recovered memory experiences. While previous research indicates that spontaneously recovered memories may reflect real memories of abuse, there is no such evidence for abuse memories recovered through suggestive therapy. The results might also influence obesity treatments and dieting choices. The authors suggest that it may be possible for people to learn to avoid certain foods by believing they had negative experiences with the food as a child. Overall, this study clearly demonstrates that false suggestions about childhood events can profoundly change people's attitudes and behavior.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

   

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3.5/5 after 20 votes

• x646d63 - Aug 19, 2008
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  Do they really think that lying to someone by suggesting that they hate doritos is a healthy way to get them to stop eating them?
  
  If these researchers really were surprised that our memories (of real or imagined events) affect how we act, they live a long way away from reality.
  
  Another study for the "duh" file.
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• DoctorKnowledge - Aug 19, 2008
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  Duh is right. The brain doesn't know the memory is false, only the researchers do. It's like kids suddenly pointing nowhere and saying "Ha, ha, I made you look."
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• phlipper - Aug 20, 2008
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  Elizabeth Loftus, one of the researchers in the study, co-wrote a book, The Myth of Repressed Memory, in which she took a strong stand against "recovered memory". She was reviled by those who claimed to have uncovered repressed memories of sexual abuse. At that time, there were a number of women, famous and otherwise, claiming to have been sexually abused by their fathers. Many of these women had "recovered" the false memories after having seen psychologists who were feminist men haters. It turns out that sexual abuse is not the kind of thing that gets forgotten. When you dad screws you, you don't forget it. Many of these real victims, the fathers, sued the psychologists and won.
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• Bigdaddyguido - Aug 21, 2008
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  I think the results of the study would be very different if they picked substance which the adults regularly enjoyed. People rarely eat egg sandwiches, and adults are very fearful of rotten eggs, so I could see how being given false negative memories would effect my comfort level with the food.
  
  However, if they made up some memory of having an awful experience involving a food I regularly eat and love, such as ice cream, fried chicken or apples I think the resulting negative effects would be much less profound. I have had hundreds of positive experiences with these foods so one bad memory probably wouldn't change much.
  
  Thus the theory this could aid in dieting doesn't seem reliable because chances are if you're trying to cut a food out of your diet its because you abuse it and therefore have plenty of "positive" memories associated with the food.
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