Psychology
How memory rewrites itself
11 min
Memory isn't a recording; it's reconstructed each time you recall it. Explore Elizabeth Loftus's work on false memories, how easily recollection can be distorted, and why confident eyewitnesses are so often wrong.
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Show notes
Memory functions like a Wikipedia page that is edited every time a person recalls an event.
Using the word smashed instead of contacted increased eyewitness speed estimates by nine miles per hour.
Twenty-five percent of people developed rich false memories of being lost in a mall as children.
Eyewitness misidentification accounts for seventy percent of convictions later overturned by the Innocence Project.
Brain scans show that false memories activate the same retrieval centers as genuine recollections.
Post-identification feedback from law enforcement can falsely inflate a witness's confidence in their own memory.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Wikipedia of the Mind2 min
- 3The Power of a Single Word3 min
- 4Planting Entire Lives3 min
- 5The High Stakes of Certainty3 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- A Theory of Remembering
- Memory's Future - University of Washington
- Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying false memories - PMC
- How memory can be manipulated, with Elizabeth Loftus, PhD
- False Memories, explained | University of Chicago News
- Are Your Memories Real? - Hidden Brain Media
- Elizabeth Loftus: How Can Our Memories Be Manipulated? - NPR
- Why you've probably never had a single accurate memory in your life | BBC Science Focus Magazine
- Is What We Remember True? | Psychology Today
- 6: Memory
- 150: The malleability of human memory (Elizabeth Loftus) – Rationally Speaking Podcast
- https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.harvard.edu/dist/3/137/files/2022/09/THE-COGNITIVE-NEUROSCIENCE-OF-CONSTRUCTIVE-MEMORY.pdf
- Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review - PMC
- Reconstructive memory
- Constructive memory: past and future - PMC
- pel4e_ch7
- Adaptive constructive processes and the future of memory - PMC - NIH
- https://compmemweb.princeton.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-constructive-memory.pdf
- Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory – ScienceOpen
- Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction :
- Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory - Science Primary Literature
- When does suggestive language shape memory for car accidents? Assessing the role of elaboration and pragmatics in a classic framing effect
- When A Lie Becomes Memory's Truth: Memory Distortion After Exposure to Misinformation
- Lost in the mall again: a preregistered replication and extension of Loftus & Pickrell (1995)
- 8.1 How Memory Functions - Psychology 2e | OpenStax
- PII: 0010-0285(75)90023-7
- https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/bf03209454.pdf?error=cookies_not_supported&code=a62ef3af-64f2-4f53-a126-aa25c404684a
- Eavesdropping on Memory | Annual Reviews
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