Misguided Memories: Sincere Distortions of Reality

Considerable research has demonstrated that people can produce sincere but inaccurate recollections by unwittingly assimilating the misleading suggestions of others. Although the boundary conditions that mediate the influence of misinformation have been intensively investigated, considerable debate continues regarding how misleading suggestions influence memory. Additional research has investigated ways to distinguish real from suggested memories. Typically people have great difficulty determining whether or not a memory is real. However, researchers have identified a number of attributes of memory descriptions that can sometimes be diagnostic, e.g., real memory descriptions tend to include more sensory characteristics. A recent exploratory study examined a new potential technique for discriminating real from suggested memories: negative feedback. We explored the hypothesis that subjects would be less reluctant to believe they were incorrect when recalling a suggested memory compared to a real memory. Surprisingly, we found no support for this hypothesis. Subjects often adamantly defended their suggested memories, illustrating the magnitude to which these “unreal” recollections are sincerely adopted.