False memories. How does the Humans in Black neutralizer work in real life?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Are there false memories

In modern psychological science, memory is defined as a mental process, the functions of which include fixation, preservation, transformation and reproduction of past experience. The abundance of possibilities of our memory allows us to use the acquired knowledge in activities and / or restore them in consciousness. However, it is possible to implant memories of events in our memory that did not actually exist.

The ambiguity of the term "memory" is revealed even in colloquial speech. By the words "I remember" we mean not only certain theoretical knowledge, but also practical skills. However, that side of mental life that brings us back to events from the past, the so-called "autobiographical memory", deserves special attention. VV Nurkova defines this term as a subjective reflection of a segment of life traversed by a person, consisting in fixing, preserving, interpreting and actualizing personally significant events and states [Nurkova, 2000].

One of the most important paradoxes of autobiographical memory is that personal memories are quite easily amenable to distortions, which include the following: complete loss of access to information, completion of memories by including new elements (confabulation), combining fragments of different memories (contamination), construction of a new memory, errors in establishing the source of information and much more. The nature of such changes is determined by endogenous and exogenous factors. Endogenous factors are understood as distortion of memories by the subject himself. This can happen under the influence of special motivation, internal attitudes, emotions, individual personality traits. So, in a state of sadness, sad events are more easily remembered, in high spirits - joyful ones. Sometimes distortions are caused by the action of memory defense mechanisms, such as repression, substitution, etc. In such cases, a person replaces real memories of unpleasant events with fictional ones, but more pleasant for him [Nurkova, 2000].

In contrast, sometimes people fixate on traumatic memories. This selective effect of memory has been considered in studies on the influence of the emotional state on mnemonic processes. A group of subjects suffering from depression and a control group were asked to recall life events associated with neutral words ("morning", "day", "apple"). Subjects from the first group more often recalled negatively colored situations, while in the control group, memories of positive and neutral events predominated. Subjects from both groups were then asked to recall specific life situations in which they felt happy. Subjects from the first group recalled such situations much more slowly, unwillingly, and less frequently compared with subjects from the control group [Bower, 1981].

Exogenous factors are understood as external influences on the subject's memories. In his early works, the American cognitive psychologist and memory specialist E. F. Loftus argued that leading questions are capable of distorting a person's memories [Loftus, 1979/1996]. Loftus later came to a similar conclusion about targeted misinformation: discussing rumors with other people, biased publications in the media, etc. are capable of forming false memories in a person [Loftus & Hoffman, 1989].

In 2002, a study was conducted to compare the persuasive power of disinformation and hypnosis. Three groups of subjects, among whom were persons who easily succumb to false beliefs, practically not amenable to such beliefs, and persons who succumb to false beliefs from time to time, were asked to listen to the story, after which they were asked questions about its content of a different nature - neutral or introducing misleading. The group of subjects, which during the drying of the story was in a normal state, practically did not make mistakes with neutral questions, but in the answers to misleading questions, the number of mistakes was large. Errors in this experiment were considered to be responses that contained false information about events in the story being told; the answer “I don’t know” was not counted as an error.

In turn, the subjects who were in a state of hypnotic sleep while listening to the story made slightly fewer mistakes in answering neutral questions than the previous group when answering misleading questions. In the case of the combined effect of the state of hypnotic sleep and misleading questions, the maximum number of memory errors was recorded. Curiously, suggestibility did not affect the number of memory errors made when answering misleading questions or being hypnotized. This allowed the authors to conclude that virtually everyone is subject to changes in the content of their memory [Scoboria, Mazzoni, Kirsch, & Milling, 2002]. Thus, misinformation has a greater impact on the number of memory errors than hypnosis, while the combined effect of these two conditions leads to the largest number of such errors, which once again confirms the plasticity of memories.

So, we come to the question of the possibility of forming new memories that did not previously exist in autobiographical memory: is it possible to implant new memories?

The ability to create a holistic memory of an event that had never happened before was first demonstrated in the Loftus study. Participants in this study were told about an event that allegedly happened to them in childhood, and then asked to remember the details about it. By believing that they were being told the truth, many subjects actually supplemented these “memories” with their own colorful details [Loftus & Pickrell, 1995]. Another experiment by Loftus, also about manipulating autobiographical memory, involved pairs of siblings. First, the elder told the younger a pseudo-real fact from his childhood. A few days later, the youngest was asked to tell that he or she "remembers" an event that did not actually happen to him. The case of Christopher and Jim gained prominence. 14-year-old Christopher heard from Jim a story about how, at the age of five, he got lost in a large department store, but a few hours later an elderly man found him and delivered him to his parents. A few days after he heard this story, Christopher presented the researcher with a full, detailed version of the false event. In his memoirs, there were such qualifying phrases as "flannel shirt", "mother's tears", etc. [Loftus & Pickrell, 1995].

In a series of follow-up experiments, Loftus and her colleagues managed to achieve a 25 percent level of inculcating memories of fictional events from their childhood in subjects. For this, various techniques have been developed: appeal to the subject's personal problems ("your fear may be the result of a dog attack experienced in childhood"), interpretation of dreams ("your dream tells me that you have moved to a greater depth"). "Documents" contribute most strongly to the instillation of false memories. Their presence ensures the formation of autobiographical memories with a high degree of subjective reliability. For example, the work of Wade, Harry, Reed and Lindsay (2002) describes how, using the PhotoShop computer program, scientists created children's "photographs" of subjects in which they were participants in some fictional situations (such as, for example, flying in a hot air balloon). Subjects were then asked to describe the event in more detail, and most of them “remembered” many precise details of a nonexistent situation [Wade, Garry, Read & Lindsay, 2002].

Another method allows you to implant false memories of unlikely or nearly impossible events. In particular, it was demonstrated in the course of a study related to the implantation of a memory of a meeting with the Bugs Bunny rabbit at Disneyland. Subjects who were previously at Disneyland were shown a fake Disney commercial starring Bugs Bunny. After a while, the subjects were interviewed, during which they were asked to talk about Disneyland. As a result, 16 percent of the subjects were convinced of a face-to-face meeting with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. However, such a meeting could hardly have taken place, since Bugs Bunny is a character from another studio, Warner Brothers, and therefore could not be in Disneyland. Among those who described meeting Bugs in person, 62 percent said they shook a rabbit's paw, and 46 percent recalled hugging him. The rest recalled how they touched his ear or tail, or even heard his catchphrase ("What's the matter, Doc?"). These memories were emotionally charged and saturated with tactile details, suggesting that the false memory was recognized as one's own [Braun, Ellis & Loftus, 2002].

Having proved that the implantation of false memories is possible, psychologists thought about the following question: do the learned false memories affect the thoughts and further behavior of the subject. An experiment was conducted in which subjects were induced to believe that they had been poisoned by certain foods in childhood [Bernstein & Loftus, 2002]. In the first group, the subjects were told that the cause of the poisoning was hard-boiled chicken eggs, and in the second, pickled cucumbers. In order for the subjects to believe in this, they were asked to take a survey, and then they were told that their answers were analyzed by a special computer program, which came to the conclusion that they had suffered from poisoning with one of these products in childhood. After making sure that both groups of subjects formed a strong belief that the poisoning really took place in the past, the scientists suggested that this false memory would affect the further behavior of these people, in particular, make them avoid a certain product. The subjects were asked to complete another survey in which they had to imagine that they were invited to a party and choose the treats they would like to eat. As a result, it turned out that the participants in the experiment tend to avoid dishes in the preparation of which the product from which they allegedly suffered in childhood is used. It has been proven that the formation of false memories can actually affect the subsequent thoughts or behavior of a person.

Thus, human memory exhibits extraordinary flexibility, which is directly reflected in the structure of our memories. All people are capable of becoming victims of false memories, to the extent that memories of events that at first glance seem completely impossible can be implanted into our memory. These memories can change our ideas about our own past, the past of other people, and can also significantly affect our thoughts and behavior.

Christina Rubanova