One strong practical implication is that false memories can be substantially reduced by easy-to-implement techniques without causing collateral damage to true memories.Ĭontrary to common belief ( 2– 5), vivid recollections such as the one reported by Piaget can be entirely false. In a 1-y follow-up (after the original interviews and debriefing), false memory rates further dropped to 5%, and participants overwhelmingly rejected the false events. By comparison, true event memories were endorsed at a higher level overall and less affected by either the repeated interviews or the sensitization techniques. This reversed the false memory build-up over the first three interviews, returning false memory rates in both suggestion conditions to the baseline levels of the first interview (i.e., to ∼15% and ∼25%, respectively). We then used two techniques to reduce false memory endorsement, source sensitization (alerting interviewees to possible external sources of the memories, e.g., family narratives) and false memory sensitization (raising the possibility of false memories being inadvertently created in memory interviews, delivered by a new interviewer). Over three repeated interviews, participants developed false memories (measured by state-of-the-art coding) of the suggested events under minimally suggestive conditions (27%) and even more so using massive suggestion (56%). We first successfully implanted false memories for two plausible autobiographical events (suggested by the students’ parents, alongside two true events). While multiple studies succeeded in inducing false memories in interview settings, we present research trying to reverse this effect (and thereby reduce the potential damage) by means of two ecologically valid strategies.
False memories of autobiographical events can create enormous problems in forensic settings (e.g., false accusations).