5 ms·

False memories are fairly easy to plant in many people. It's possible to plant them just by repeatedly asking someone about something that didn't happen: https

False memories are fairly easy to plant in many people. It's possible to plant them just by repeatedly asking someone about something that didn't happen: https://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm https://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm Also this: > “Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same kinds of complex details as real memories,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Julia Shaw of the University of Bedfordshire in the UK. > “All participants need to generate a richly detailed false memory is 3 hours in a friendly interview environment, where the interviewer introduces a few wrong details and uses poor memory-retrieval techniques.” http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/people-can-be-convinced-they-committed-a-crime-they-dont-remember.html http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/...

beachstartup 11y ago
i've made up memories spontaneously and was in total disbelief until proven wrong.
- tbagman 11y ago
  Are you sure? I think you're misremembering.
derefr 11y ago
"Gaslighting" is the popular term for this. It's something commonly done accidentally by parents, where a parent will insist a child's version of events is incorrect because the parent remembers it differently, until the child's memory is replaced with the parent's narrative. Side-note: people don't tend to realize that this is what the antagonist in the Star Trek TNG episode "Chain of Command" is trying to accomplish. He's not trying to make Picard "submit" by saying something he doesn't believe; he's trying to make Picard really, actually believe that there are five lights. (And in the end—despite Picard's insistence otherwise—he does.)

beachstartup 11y ago

i've made up memories spontaneously and was in total disbelief until proven wrong.

tbagman 11y ago
Are you sure? I think you're misremembering.

derefr 11y ago

"Gaslighting" is the popular term for this. It's something commonly done accidentally by parents, where a parent will insist a child's version of events is incorrect because the parent remembers it differently, until the child's memory is replaced with the parent's narrative. Side-note: people don't tend to realize that this is what the antagonist in the Star Trek TNG episode "Chain of Command" is trying to accomplish. He's not trying to make Picard "submit" by saying something he doesn't believe; he's trying to make Picard really, actually believe that there are five lights. (And in the end—despite Picard's insistence otherwise—he does.)