Studies have been replicated and show a high degree of reliability

There is evidence that what is seen in the laboratory is seen in real life. (I.e Holocaust testimonies recalling events)

Research has been applied to improve the process of data gathering from witnesses. Additionally helps with understanding false memories

Many say studies lack ecological validity

Studies by Loftus under controlled conditions are open to criticism, as they are artificial in nature (i.e being in an actual accident compared to labs)

Ethical concerns about manipulating participant’s memories. (I.e deception in the Lost in the Mall study)

Based on the idea that memories are not saved as complete, coherent wholes. Instead it is saved as points of data about the object or event

Retrieval of memory is influenced by perception, beliefs, experience, cultural factors, and context in which we are recalling

Bartlett argued that we try to make sense of the past by adding our interpretations of events and deductions of what happened

He argued that memory is an imaginative reconstruction of experience

To determine if false memories of autobiographical events can be created through the power of suggestion

3 males, 21 females

Participants received a questionnaire in the mail. It asked the participants to write about 4 memories then mail back the questionnaire

Three events were real, one was “getting lost in the mall”

Instructed that if they do not remember the event, write “I do not remember this”

Participants were interviewed twice over a period of 4 weeks. They were asked to recall as much information as they could about the events

They were then asked to rate their level of confidence about the event from 1 - 10

After the second interview, they were debriefed and asked to guess which memory was fake

"Could you retell three childhood memories of the participant"

"Do you remember a time when the participant was lost in a mall"

25% of the participants “recalled” the false memory. However, they ranked this memory as less confident than other memories

Reasoning for the false memories is thought to be because of the schema or stereotype of being lost in a mall (data points of being lost in a mall)

Although this is often seen as strong evidence of the power of suggestion, only 25% had them

The study does not tell us why some participants were more susceptible than others

It was possible to verify the memories through the involvement of parents and siblings

Ecological validity was high as people were talking about childhood memories

The research was applied in areas of eyewitness testimony and therapy

It’s difficult to know whether this is “true” false memory or distortion of another

Ethical concerns about deception about making the participant believe in a false memory

The questionnaire could be contaminated as it was filled at home

There could be demand characteristics, such as social desirability

Investigate if participants who estimated high in experiment 1 would say the saw broken glass in the second experiment. Researchers hypothesized that this would happen

150 students were divided into 3 groups of 50 students each.

Participants watched one minute of film containing clips of car accidents all about 4 seconds each.

Participants were asked to describe the accidents in their own words and answer a few questions about the film they just watched.

A week later the participants came back to answer 10 questions about the film.

A critical question was “Did you see any broken glass?” with a yes or no answer

There was no broken glass in the video, but researchers assumed broken glass was associated with high speed

Group 2 was asked the same but replaced smashed with hit

Group 3 was not asked this question and became the control group

Group 1 was asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”

Results can be interpreted in Bartlett’s theory where people change details when trying to remember things.

This is probably what happened to the participants when they were given information through the key words of either “smashed” or “hit”

Participants may have used past knowledge of car accidents to make decisions on broken glass (schema)

Study can lack ecological validity and therefore may be difficult to generalize findings