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Elizabeth Loftus 'False Memory'

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False Memory Paper

Imagine someone telling you an interesting story that has you intrigued. Once they reach the end of the story they ask if you remember what took place. For the life of you, you cannot recall this taking place. They continue on attempting to make you believe you were actually apart of this story; until you eventually agree to being there without remembering all the details. Due to you being able to remember all the details allows for false memories to occur. It can be extremely easy to create false memories in children. Research has proven adults can also create false memories under different circumstances. When we are asked to explain things that happened, if we are asked leading questions, we may be led to say some things …show more content…

This entailed the study of making people believe something tragic like being lost in the mall, or being attacked by a vicious animal had happened to them in their childhood. These events never actually took place with these individuals however they believed they could remember missing details. In 2002, Kimberly Wade along with other researchers created a photograph of participants from their childhood. In the photograph the participants are shown riding a hot-air balloon. Then the researchers asked them to view the picture and explain their memory of the hot-air balloon ride. Surprisingly after a few attempts, half said they remember taking the ride. It is very interesting how powerful our minds are, yet we can fool our minds into having false …show more content…

It claims that when people are interrogated a certain way and they hear other people’s testimony; misinformation can influence their memories. Misinformation can also move people to believe bias media on an event that they actually witnessed. It is almost unbelievable that our minds would switch memories on events that we know for sure has actually taken place. Based on the media we must realize the media will always only tell us what they want us to know; furthermore everything they say may not all be facts. Yet we believe them assuming they are speaking

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