False Memories Easily Manufactured

This is a very significant and interesting confirmation on planting of false memories that every skeptic should bookmark.



It has application to all the claims of satanic ritual abuse, false confession to crimes and to many other areas promoted and supported by the woomeisters.



Per the Toronto Star:

Planting false memories fairly easy, psychologists find

New study bolsters notion that memory is fragile and aggressive police interrogations don’t always serve justice.



http://ift.tt/1zFC7wS



And the Abstract from the original paper at: http://ift.tt/1zFC7wW

Quote:

Memory researchers long have speculated that certain tactics may lead people to recall crimes that never occurred, and thus could potentially lead to false confessions. This is the first study to provide evidence suggesting that full episodic false memories of committing crime can be generated in a controlled experimental setting. With suggestive memory-retrieval techniques, participants were induced to generate criminal and noncriminal emotional false memories, and we compared these false memories with true memories of emotional events. After three interviews, 70% of participants were classified as having false memories of committing a crime (theft, assault, or assault with a weapon) that led to police contact in early adolescence and volunteered a detailed false account. These reported false memories of crime were similar to false memories of noncriminal events and to true memory accounts, having the same kinds of complex descriptive and multisensory components. It appears that in the context of a highly suggestive interview, people can quite readily generate rich false memories of committing crime.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1EOXhwi