Interrogators are known for their ways of making you talk . And they can make you talk.
Even about things that never happened.
Hello viewers, Trace here for DNews.
You may think your memory is perfect, or you may be like me and occasionally forget your
own name.
But there is an interesting third option for memory; you may remember things that never
even happened.
A study in Psychological Science showed that by using the right, or rather the wrong techniques,
people can be led to think they’ve done things they never did.
Serious things that got the police involved.
Things you would and should probably remember doing.
Lead researcher Julia Shaw and her team contacted the caregivers of 60 students from the University
of British Columbia.
They asked them to give them specific accounts of events in the students lives from when
they were 11 to 14.
Then the researchers brought in the students for a series of 3 interviews each a week apart.
In the first interview the students were told about 2 events from adolescence, except one
of them wasn’t real.
The researchers would tell them the student had either committed some sort of crime like
assault or theft, or had experienced some emotional trauma like being attacked by a
dog.
Even though the story overall was fake, the researchers sprinkled in some real details
from that time in the student’s life.
Then the subjects were asked to explain what had happened, and when they understandably
struggled to remember the thing they had never done, interviewers encouraged them to try
anyway and focus on specific details.
In the second and third interviews the students were asked again to describe both events.
If you think you would have called shenanigans at this point, you’re probably wrong.
71% of the students who were told they had committed a crime in their youth actually
believed they had done it.
55% of them gave detailed accounts of their dealings with the police.
The subjects that were told they had emotional trauma didn’t fare better, with 76% of them
giving specific details and confidently recounting the experience.
You may think people with better memories would be more resistant to being inceptioned,
but that’s not the case.
A study at UC Irvine tested ordinary people along with some who had Highly Superior Autobiographical
Memory.
The subjects with HSAM could remember what day of the week specific dates were, and could
tell you exactly when major events took place.
These people have no excuse for forgetting anniversaries.
And yet when they were baited into thinking they had seen things they hadn’t, like footage
of United flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on September 11th, subjects with super memory
took the bait as often as everyone else, about a fifth of the time.
These studies highlight just how malleable our memories are, and how they can be shaped
with a little coaxing.
It has big implications for police interviews and interrogations, and now I really want
to listen to all of Jay’s interviews from Serial again.
For more proof that your brain is a dirty liar, Anthony elaborates on false memories
here.
What’s another quirk of the human brain you think is interesting?
If there’s one we haven’t covered, let us know in the comments and we’ll check
it out…
If we remember to.
See you next time on DNews.