Can we always trust our own mind? | Professor Elizabeth Loftus on The fiction of memory (2018)
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- From tweaking a real memory to planting a completely fabricated one, tampering with the mind is worryingly easy according to Professor Elizabeth Loftus.
An authority on human memory and its exceeding imperfections, the cognitive psychologist is well known for her work in criminal law, where she has shown how eyewitness testimony is manipulated.
“We get misinformation from a bias interrogator who has an agenda… we get misinformation from high profiled events, we get misinformation from overhearing other witnesses,” said the professor of psychology and law at the University of California, Irvine.
“All of these provide an opportunity for witness’ testimony to become contaminated and distorted.”
Years of research have taught Professor Loftus just how unreliable memory is, and she explored this topic during a lecture hosted by UCD School of Psychology on the biology of false memory.
An expert witness in hundreds of trials - including those involving Rodney King, Michael Jackson, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, and OJ Simpson, Professor Loftus was prompted to experiment with implanting false memories by a spate of ‘Satanic abuse’ cases in the 1990s relating to repressed memories.
Evolving into a global ‘moral panic’ that reached as far as the UK and Australia, hundreds of children in the United States under the influence of therapists remembered having been subjected to horrific sexual abuse, often by loved ones.
“People were coming into therapy for one problem and were being convinced that their issues were due to repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse,” Professor Loftus said.
“Sometimes these patients were ‘recovering’ ten years of being raped… with memories so bizarre that they were remembering their families forcing them into satanic rituals, of sacrificing animals or watching babies being killed.”
Compelled to examine this growing phenomenon, the memory manipulation expert devised an experiment to show how easy it was to persuade people to accept a false memory.
Involving a false childhood memory of getting lost in a shopping centre and being helped by an elderly person to be reunited with their family, more than a quarter of subjects came to believe in the entirely made-up scenario.
In several US states, and thanks to Professor Loftus’ research, recovered memory is no longer, on its own, enough for a prosecution to proceed.
“Just because someone tells you something, and they say it with a whole lot of confidence, describe it in a lot of detail, and cry and get emotional when they tell their story, it doesn't mean it really happened,” she said.
“You need independent corroboration to know if you’re dealing with real memory or one the creation of some other process.”
Professor Loftus was awarded the UCD Ulysses Medal by University College Dublin ahead of her talk by Professor Mark Rogers, UCD Registrar and Deputy President.
The medal is the highest honour the university can award. It was inaugurated in 2005 to highlight the creative brilliance of UCD alumnus James Joyce, who graduated in 1902 with a degree in English, French and Italian.
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“....At the center of the backlash movement was an organization called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). Founded in 1992, FMSF was on its surface an “advocacy group” created by and for parents who’d been accused by their children of sexual abuse. The group’s supposed agenda was to provide support and fellowship to families that had been “destroyed” by accusations of incest. They launched a well-funded media campaign purporting the existence of an epidemic of “False Memory Syndrome” - not a scientifically researched condition, but rather a slogan concocted by accused parents to discredit the testimonies of their children. The campaign was highly effective, and the media eagerly gobbled it up. It eased the dissonance between an image of the “perfect American family” and an emerging consciousness of staggering rates of child sexual abuse (CSA) across the U.S. and worldwide.”
“....Furthermore, FMSF members have gone on record to espouse the view that molestation is not significantly harmful to children. Elizabeth Loftus has been quoted as saying that child molestation is “not that big a deal,” and FMSF founding member Ralph Underwager was quoted in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia as saying that sex with children is a “responsible choice for the individual.”...” WHAAAATTTT???
Wow!
Who is Danny Strider? I once found this quote in the footnote of a book but I don't remember the title of the book:
"If a victim embellishes her abuse by claiming satanic abuse it is false"
touche! "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
The levels to which people are willing to go to prove that SA never happened is astounding.
She brings up some good points. Its sad that the therapists, doctors, and other competent personal that thinks the opposite are isolating themselves.
Believe the victims. Do you know what it is like being told you have false memories or are making up abuse?
How can we manifest memory in learning language,and is memory related to dream,and how memory works while sleeping.
Interested with your wounderful speech
Is the .mind divided into rooms each room for certain me.
Memory
This woman has been sued and discredited numerous times. Shame on you for letting her spread her bogus propaganda!
Please post any links, sources, or any proof of your claims that Dr. Loftus has been discredited. Thanks.
Shame on these therapists making patients more ill because of suggestions. Shame on these people smearing the reputation of innocent people.
@@annaczarny163What therapists? Name them.
Idiot. She has not been discredited, in fact, her work from decades ago is just now being supported and recognized through new understandings of the cognitive process of memory. Secondly, and ironically, you said "Shame on you for letting her spread her bogus propaganda." Do you even know what propaganda means? Based on your statement, you are confusing it with disinformation - and they are two VERY different things. Propaganda is a cognitive process that shifts a person's perception of an issue from a practical one, to an emotional one. Propaganda is a complicated process of deception through alternative choices - ones that the target would be likely gravitate too because of social identity. Look up "the torches of freedom campaign" from 1929 to see one of the best examples of propaganda. Disinformation on the other hand, is the intentional act of providing information known to be false (i.e., lieing) to affect the perception; and through perception, the acts or thoughts of the target. Its not complicated, its just crude, unadulterated bad data, that is most effectual based on its repetition and source. If you had read Dr. Loftus' work, you would know the difference between them. You would also know she is not discredited - controversial sure - on some points - but which leading researcher hasn't been controversial at times? You should know she is one of the most accomplished memory researchers of our time, and her work goes far beyond the suppressed memory topic from the 90's that you are likely referring to.
@@annaczarny163Their memories would be suggested memories and not real. There would be no background information attached to them.