MEMORY, 2018

VOL. 26, NO. 1, 2–14

https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2017.1340286

INVITED REVIEW

When lying changes memory for the truth

Henry Otgaara,b and Alysha Bakerc
a
Section Forensic Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands; bDepartment of Psychology, City, University of London,
London, UK; cDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Canada

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In the legal field, victims and offenders frequently lie to avoid talking about serious incidents, Lying; memory; false
such as past experiences of sexual abuse or criminal involvement. Although these individuals memory; omission;
may initially lie about an experienced event, oftentimes these same people eventually commission
abandon their lies and are forthcoming with what truly happened. To date, it is unclear
whether such lying affects later statements about one’s memory for the experienced event.
The impetus of the present review is to compile the current state of knowledge on the
effects of lying on memory. Based on existing literature, we will describe how deceptive
strategies (e.g., false denials) regarding what is remembered may affect memory in
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consequential ways, such as forgetting of details, falsely remembering features that were not
present, or a combination of both. It will be argued that the current literature suggests that
mnemonic outcome is contingent on the type of lie and we will propose a theoretical
framework outlining which forms of lying likely result in certain memory outcomes. Potential
avenues of future research also will be discussed.

Notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, who was charged and
convicted with several kidnappings, rapes, and gruesome
murders in the United States during the 1970s, originally
denied involvement in the crimes throughout his trials
that spanned over a decade due to escapes and additional
crimes. But, before his execution in the late 1980s, Bundy
decided to confess to several of the murders he was con-
victed of as well as others unknown to the police (see Car-
lisle, 2014 for overview). A pertinent issue is how Bundy’s
denials for several years affected his memory for the
actual details of the crimes. This issue will be the key
focus of the present review paper in which we will
discuss the effects of lying on memory.
The act of lying1 draws substantially on cognitive
resources (e.g., Christ, Van Essen, Watson, Brubaker, &
McDermott, 2009; Sporer & Schwandt, 2006; see also
Walczyk, Harris, Duck, & Mulay, 2014; Zuckerman,
DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). False details must be con-
structed and communicated in a credible manner by moni-
toring one’s verbal and nonverbal channels. Cognitive
resources can be even more under demand because suc-
cessful attempts at lying typically require that the details
of the original truth be remembered as well as the lie.
Although lying requires adequate performance from
one’s memory, a wealth of research stemming from the
last several decades has revealed that memory is reconstruc-
tive and malleable in nature (see Loftus, 2005). Several
studies have demonstrated that one’s original memory for
an event can be revised spontaneously (e.g., Otgaar,
Howe, Brackmann, & Smeets, 2016; Roediger & McDermott,
1995) or altered when suggestive information is provided by
credible others (e.g., Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Loftus & Pickrell,
1995; Otgaar, Candel, Smeets, & Merckelbach, 2010; Valen-
tine & Mesout, 2009). The imperfections of memory have
been demonstrated in several contexts with various types
of stimuli and populations. For example, research has
found that participants can be led to falsely recollect
minute details of events but, more drastically, can also
falsely remember entire events (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995;
Otgaar, Candel, Merckelbach, & Wade, 2009). Although the
finding of suggestive information threatening the reliability
of one’s memory for past events is well documented, this
typically has been suggestive information provided by
others (i.e., external; whether it be an experimenter, confed-
erate, or co-participant) rather than the memorial effects of
false accounts provided by the rememberer themselves. At
the moment, a comprehensive understanding about what
happens to one’s memory for the past when the truth is
withheld,2 such as being less than forthcoming during
crime-relevant questioning, is unclear.
The intimate relationship between lying and
memory
There are several forensically relevant contexts in which
lying about what one remembers may occur. For

CONTACT Henry Otgaar henry.otgaar@maastrichtuniversity.nl

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
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built upon in any way.

example, victims of sexual abuse often delay disclosing an
abusive experience through strategies such as falsely
denying the abusive event altogether (Block et al., 2012;
Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon,
2003; Sjöberg, & Lindblad, 2002; but see Lyon, 2007 and
Otgaar, Howe, Memon, & Wang, 2014), which has put
false denials at the forefront of discussions about sexual
abuse allegations. Furthermore, false denials often are
communicated by offenders trying to avoid culpability
for a particular crime (e.g., Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, &
Einarsson, 2004). Another memory-related claim that regu-
larly occurs in investigative contexts is when a rememberer
asserts that he/she has no memory for an entire event or
parts of an event – that is, claims complete or partial
amnesia which could, for example, be the result of neuro-
logical damage (e.g., Bourget & Bradford, 1995; Kalant,
1996; Kopelman, 1995) – and then sometimes comes up
with a fabricated variant of what ostensibly occurred.
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When perceived to be genuine, accepted amnesia claims
can have serious legal ramifications as they can lead
to questions surrounding criminal responsibility (Cima,
Merckelbach, Nijman, Knauer, & Hollnack, 2002; Porter, Birt,
Herve, & Yuille, 2001) or competency to stand trial (see
Smith & Resnick, 2007). Not surprisingly, feigning amnesia –
claiming memory loss when in reality they do remember –
is an appealing option for those wanting to reap the potential
“benefits” associated with accepted amnesia claims (see
Cima, Merckelbach, Hollnack, & Knauer, 2003).
Rememberers also may be motivated to fabricate
specific details about an experience, and the act of doing
so can even vary by motivation (external or internal) and
intent. For example, witnesses may be forced to speculate
about how an event unfolded after (honestly) claiming not
to have any knowledge. Similarly, false details may be pro-
vided in response to (suggestive) pressures by the inter-
viewer; for example, certain coercive interview tactics can
persuade suspects/offenders to commit information that
they do not actually remember or that did not happen
altogether (see Garven, Wood, Malpass, & Shaw, 1998). Of
relevance to the current discussion is a fabrication gener-
ated with the intent to deceive the listener (i.e., when
false details about an original experience are committed
that the rememberer knows to be untrue with the goal
of deceiving), such as when an offender provides a false
alibi for the critical time a crime occurred so that he/she
is removed as a suspect in the police inquiry. In conclusion,
there are several strategies that a deceiver can use in inves-
tigative settings when asked to provide an account of a
crime. Rememberers can simply deny details or the entirety
of an event (false denial), claim complete or partial memory
Figure 1. Relationship between cognitive resources used and lying strategy.
MEMORY 3
loss for the event (feigning amnesia3; sometimes combined
with an alternative fabricated account), or provide an entire
alternative/false account (fabrication/confabulation4).
Generally, it appears that there has recently been a
greater appreciation of context or lie type when it comes
to studying lies, the processes involved, and the various con-
sequences (e.g., DePaulo et al., 2003; Frank & Feeley, 2003;
Ganis, Morris, & Kosslyn, 2009; see Sporer, 2016; Warren,
Schertler, & Bull, 2009). For example, fMRI research has
found that there may be distinct neural pathways associated
with different types of lies (such as whether the lie fits into a
coherent story or whether it was previously memorised;
Ganis, Kosslyn, Stose, Thompson, & Yurgelun-Todd, 2003;
see also Ganis et al., 2009). In a similar vein, theoretically,
there is reason to believe that different types of lies
demand varying degrees of cognitive resources (e.g., Vrij &
Heaven, 1999; Walczyk et al., 2014). The cognitive resources
involved in the different strategies aimed at withholding the
truth – including feigning amnesia, falsely denying, or fabri-
cating – appear to vary such that more cognitive resources
are likely used when an entire (alternative) account of an
event is fabricated versus simply claiming memory loss or
falsely denying an event took place (Walczyk et al., 2014;
see Figure 1). Of course, this may not be so easily teased
apart because deceptive strategies are often used in
tandem; one may claim amnesia or falsely deny a critical
part of the experience while also providing a truthful or fab-
ricated account for the rest of the experience, for example.
Although these deceptive strategies can be used together,
when examined individually it appears they have unique
effects on memory which we theorise to be a result of the
varying cognitive resources required.
There are several ways in which memory can be potentially
influenced by deceptive strategies, including hits (correctly
identifying a previous object/detail; i.e., correct memory),
false alarms/commission errors (reporting an object/detail
that was not present; i.e., false memory), misses/omission
errors (failing to report a present object/detail), and correct
rejections (accurately rejecting an object/detail that was
not present). To begin our discussion of the effects of
deceptive strategies on these various memory outcomes,
we will now turn to the literature that has documented the
effect of false denials and feigning amnesia on memory.
Lying and omission errors
False denials
Empirical investigation into the relationship between false
denials and memory is limited compared to research on
 4 H. OTGAAR AND A. BAKER
the mnemonic consequences of other forms of lying, such
as feigned amnesia or fabrication. However, findings from a
handful of studies on the topic to date suggest that false
denials may lead to omission errors. In all of these
studies, the effect of denying was compared to a group
that was instructed to tell the truth. In the first investigation
of its kind, Vieira and Lane (2013) examined the effects of
false denials (relative to fabrications) on memory for the
source of an experience. After an encoding phase during
which several pictures (e.g., of an apple) were viewed/
studied, participants were instructed (in a random
fashion) to deny or describe either studied (i.e., old) or
unstudied (i.e., new) objects. Following a delay, participants
completed a source memory test by viewing both new and
old pictures during which they were instructed to reply
honestly (i.e., report what was actually remembered from
the original studying phase and ignore any previous
instruction to respond deceptively). More specifically, par-
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ticipants had to report their memory for two aspects: (1)
whether they had studied the item in the earlier phase of
the study and (2) the way in which they lied about the
item in the earlier phase (i.e., whether they had sub-
sequently falsely denied or described that item). Of great-
est interest to the current discussion is that the authors
found participants’ memory for whether they had studied
an item was affected by the type of lie they had been
assigned to in the rehearsal phase for that item. Specifi-
cally, when asked whether they had studied the items pre-
viously, participants had greater difficulty remembering
whether they had studied an item in the first session if
they had later falsely denied having studied it rather than
if they had to tell the truth about the studied item. In
sum, poorer memory for whether an item was studied pre-
viously was evidenced for items that were initially falsely
denied relative to studied items that had to be truthfully
described.
A relevant point of discussion concerning the results of
Vieira and Lane (2013) is that false denials led to impaired
memory performance relative to items that were studied
and truthfully rehearsed in the first place. However,
although this situation mirrors real-world scenarios (i.e.,
people lie or tell the truth in a police investigation) and
this comparison implies that false denials result in impaired
memory performance, the obtained results do not provide
conclusive evidence that false denials lead to omission
errors. Strong evidence for such would be false denials
leading to worse memory performance compared to
items that were studied but not rehearsed. However,
Vieira and Lane (2013) did not find evidence for this in
their study. Nonetheless, recent evidence does seem to
show that false denials affect memory; however, this
effect does not seem to be related to memory of the
stimuli but to memory of what was discussed.
That is, the effect of impaired memory performance
following false denials has since been investigated more
comprehensively with crime-relevant stimuli, including
video footage (Otgaar, Howe, Smeets, & Wang, 2016; Otgaar
et al., 2014). For example, Otgaar and colleagues (2014)
questioned participants (children and adults) about their
memory concerning several presented and non-presented
details of a video they had watched previously (e.g., “What
did the man steal?”). After this, a subgroup of participants
was instructed to (falsely) deny having seen each detail
in response to these questions (e.g., “The man did not
steal anything”). After a one-week delay, participants
received a source memory test in which they were asked
whether they had seen certain details in the video and
whether they had talked about these details during the
first session with the interviewer. False denials did not
impact memory for the details of the video. Interestingly,
however, false denials did impair memory for having dis-
cussed certain details in the initial interview (i.e., partici-
pants later falsely denied having discussed a previously
denied detail). The researchers termed this effect: denial-
induced forgetting (DIF).
In two subsequent experiments (Otgaar, Howe, Smeets,
& Wang, 2016), the previous work was expanded upon by
examining DIF with pictures rather than video (Experiment
1) and the addition of an external denial group (i.e.,
someone else indicating that the participant’s memory is
incorrect by denying the existence of a previously
present detail; Experiments 1 and 2). These follow-up
experiments allowed for the determination of how reliable
DIF was when a different source of denial was used with
different stimuli. In both experiments, the authors repli-
cated DIF: the false deniers demonstrated impaired
memory for having discussed details in the previous inter-
view while in fact these details were mentioned in the
initial interview. Overall, this collection of research seems
to show that false denials lead to omission errors concern-
ing the content of stimuli, but only when false denial
effects are compared with material that is both studied
and rehearsed. The work on DIF demonstrates that there
is strong support that false denials lead to omission
errors of having lied during an interview.
Feigned amnesia
Studies investigating feigned amnesia typically follow a
standard procedure: participants witness an event or
perform a certain act and are subsequently instructed to
simulate amnesia or report the account of their experience
honestly in an initial interview. Previous studies have used
various types of instructions in this regard. For example,
some have instructed participants to “describe in writing
the course of events so as to evade responsibility, as if
you did not remember very well” (Christianson & Bylin,
1999), “minimize your responsibility by simulating a
memory disorder. Thus, try to describe events in such a
way so it looked like you have great difficulties in remem-
bering what happened” (Van Oorsouw & Merckelbach,
2004), or simply “feign amnesia” (Van Oorsouw & Merckel-
bach, 2006). Then, (after a delay) participants return for a
second interview at which point all groups are instructed

to answer the interviewer’s questions honestly and
memory performance for the original event is assessed.
Several studies using crime-relevant stimuli have
revealed that feigning amnesia leads to impaired
memory in the form of increased rates of omission errors
at the follow-up interview [i.e., failure to report critical
details (Christianson & Bylin, 1999; Van Oorsouw & Merck-
elbach, 2004)]. Although differences in omission rates
have been found between participants who feign
amnesia and those who report honestly during both inter-
views, no differences in omission errors have been demon-
strated when compared to delayed, genuine responders
(i.e., participants who do not recall at the initial interview
and respond genuinely only at the second interview; Sun,
Punjabi, Greenberg, & Seamon, 2009; Van Oorsouw &
Merckelbach, 2004). This pattern of finding at times has
been considered to be support for a “feigned amnesia
effect” (e.g., Christianson & Bylin, 1999; Van Oorsouw &
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Merckelbach, 2004). Alternatively, in response to these
findings, some researchers have argued that there is
nothing unique about the cognitive processes involved
in simulating amnesia specifically, that differences are
only apparent due to variations in the opportunity to prac-
tice the material, and that the memory-debilitating effects
are purely methodological in nature (e.g., Sun et al., 2009).
In other words, Sun et al. (2009) claim that it may not be the
act of explicitly reporting a lack of memory for the experi-
ence but rather just simply a lack of practicing of the
material that catalyses the memory-impairing effects of
feigned amnesia (e.g., Bornstein, Liebel, & Scarberry, 1998).
Recent research by Otgaar, Prudon, and Jelicic (2017)
used the DIF method with one group feigning amnesia
for the event. Interestingly, they found that the group
who had to feign amnesia had impaired memory perform-
ance for the interview, similar to the DIF effect. This seems
to indicate that feigning amnesia negatively affects
memory for the interview as well. Collectively, the studies
on feigning amnesia suggest that this type of lying will
result in the form of failing to remember aspects of the
content of the event (i.e., omission errors), undermining
overall memory performance during later attempts to
provide truthful accounts – albeit that this effect only
appears when participants who have to feign amnesia
are compared with honest responders. Furthermore,
there is preliminary evidence showing that feigning
amnesia leads to omissions errors of the interview.
Lying and the creation of false details and
memories
As noted above, there are various circumstances in which
rememberers themselves may generate incorrect infor-
mation to deceive a listener and that has the potential to
be incorporated into one’s prospective memory reports
as well. In other words, self-generated fabrications can
serve as another source of misinformation that might
threaten the reliability of a memory being queried during
MEMORY 5
the investigative process. The majority of studies examin-
ing the effect of (self-generated) fabrications on memory
have employed what is often referred to as the forced con-
fabulation paradigm (Ackil & Zaragoza, 1998, 2011; Frost,
LaCroix, & Sanborn, 2003; Hanba & Zaragoza, 2007; Zara-
goza, Payment, Ackil, Drivdahl, & Beck, 2001). In this para-
digm, participants (children or adults) view certain stimuli
or are subjected to a particular event and, after a delay,
are forced to falsely describe an object/event (including
those that were absent during the exposure phase). More
specifically, participants assigned to the forced confabula-
tion condition are typically instructed to provide answers
to all posed questions (some answerable and others unans-
werable) even if they do not know the answer (i.e., forced
guess), whereas those assigned to other conditions are
either instructed not to guess (e.g., Otgaar et al., 2014) or
only guess when they would like to (e.g., Gombos,
Pezdek, & Haymond, 2012). For example, in response to
the question of where a child was bleeding after falling
off a chair (when in reality there was no blood visible) par-
ticipants in the forced confabulated condition have to
provide some detail such as (falsely) reporting that the
child was bleeding on his knee (Ackil & Zaragoza, 2011).
This act of forced confabulation is similar to many forensic
contexts in which a rememberer is coerced to speculate
how events occurred, as there is not necessarily any mali-
cious intent on the rememberer’s behalf.
A fairly robust finding is that forced fabrications lead to
an increased rate of commission errors (e.g., Ackil & Zara-
goza, 2011; Chroback & Zaragoza, 2008, 2012; Gombos
et al., 2012; Van Oorsouw & Giesbrecht, 2008; Zaragoza
et al., 2001), but does not seem to affect number of
correct details. For example, a typical result that has
emerged is that participants who are forced to confabulate
a detail (e.g., state that they saw a dog in the picture while
in reality no dog was present) will state after a delay that
they remember seeing that particular detail. Moreover,
this effect can be exacerbated by confirmatory feedback
(e.g., Hanba & Zaragoza, 2007).
Although forced confabulation leads to commission
errors, it is not entirely evident whether it results in false
memories of completely new details (i.e., reporting an
object that was not present) or also in distortions of the
original memory (i.e., alteration of a quality/detail of a
present object/experience). Although this has not been
teased apart in the forced confabulation research, it is
likely that it depends on what is being confabulated. If par-
ticipants confabulate entirely new details which do not
refer to the experienced event then a false memory is
most likely to occur. However, if a participant confabulates
a detail related to something that has been present (see
above example about the bleeding knee), a distortion is
likely to occur. Furthermore, there are mixed results for
whether self-generated misinformation is more readily
incorporated into memory than other-generated misinfor-
mation. For example, Pezdek, Lam, and Sperry (2009) found
that misinformation provided by another person at initial
 6 H. OTGAAR AND A. BAKER
questioning was more likely to be incorporated into
memory at the follow-up interview than fabricated
details (i.e., self-generated misinformation). However,
others have found conflicting results, such as false
memory rates that are comparable for the two sources,
except that false recall rates associated with a narrative
were higher for self-generated fabrications than inter-
viewer suggestions when the lie was given after overt
resistance and pre-test warning (e.g., Ackil & Zaragoza,
2011).
Nonetheless, the forced confabulation research to date
does suggest that forcing individuals to falsely describe a
non-existent detail/object increases the likelihood of that
detail/object being remembered later. Although this scen-
ario represents some real-world contexts, research
suggests that forcing rememberers to fabricate details
and voluntarily fabricating details may differentially influ-
ence memory with information being less likely to be
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remembered when one is forced to guess (e.g., Pezdek,
Sperry, & Owens, 2007). This suggests that false memories
may be fostered even further with deliberate fabrication
and, more generally, that considering whether attempted
fabrication has occurred may be important when examin-
ing resulting memories.
An important issue related to the literature on confabu-
lations is whether forced confabulations can be considered
a form of lying because participants are instructed to come
up with a confabulatory response. However, this procedure
does not vary substantially from a plethora of studies on
deception detection in which participants are also
instructed to come up with a false statement just as is
the case in work on forced confabulations (e.g., Bogaard,
Meijer, Vrij, & Merckelbach, 2016). Given that lying is seen
as a (un)successful attempt to create in someone else a
belief of which the communicator of the lie knows it is
not true (see Note 1), the act of forced confabulations
approaches the way in which lying is defined in the decep-
tion detection field. Of course, one difference between
studies on forced confabulations and lying is that in the
former, participants sometimes resist the pressure to con-
fabulate because they do not receive the literal and specific
instruction to deceive someone else.
Besides the studies reported above, there is additional
research showing that the act of lying has subtler effects
than mere omissions and/or commissions. These studies
speak more so to the question of whether lying truly
alters the original memory and whether the rememberer
genuinely believes the revised memory to be a true
account. Consider, for example, a witness to a crime who
provides a false description of the event in question out
of fear of the perpetrator. Based on the literature reviewed
in the previous section on forced fabrications, there is evi-
dence to suggest that details from this false account are
incorporated into the witness’ memory for the event,
such that he/she may integrate the false detail and be
more likely to report it later on if a decision is made to
abandon the lie for the truth. However, although a
fabricated detail may be reported at this point, and
doing so undermines the overall accuracy of the
memory, this new detail does not necessarily overwrite
(true) details of the experience. For example, if a victim fab-
ricates that the culprit had a knife when in reality no
weapon was present, it is unlikely that the true memories
of the crime (the culprit stealing money) are adversely
affected. In this case, only the addition of a new false
detail will undermine the overall accuracy of a statement.
As such, examining omission and commission errors only
provides partial information about whether memory has
been affected by one’s lying but does not say much
about (1) whether lying might also lead to memory distor-
tion of a particular detail and (2) whether lying might lead
to increases or decreases in believing that the event truly
occurred to oneself.
If we acknowledge this nuance, there has been some
preliminary research investigating whether attempts at
lying distort one’s beliefs (e.g., Polage, 2004, 2012) and atti-
tudes (e.g., Brady, 2011) of having experienced a false
event. An important distinction is that these studies
include deliberate attempts at lying during which those
whose memory is being examined intentionally misrepre-
sent their opinions or lie about their beliefs (rather than
being forced like in the forced confabulation paradigm).
For example, in two studies, Polage (2004) had participants
write false accounts of events (that they had previously
rated as unlikely to have ever happened) and completed
an interview a week later during which they were ques-
tioned about the false events. After another one week
(Experiments 1 and 2) or five-week (Experiment 2) delay,
participants again were asked to honestly rate the likeli-
hood of events that were previously queried (as well as a
control event that was not written about in the earlier
session). Interestingly, over half of participants substantially
reduced their likelihood ratings for lied-about items com-
pared to likelihood ratings for the control item.5
However, there was also a small proportion of participants
who increased their belief in the occurrence of the lied-
about event to the maximum possible (i.e., strongly
believed the event did occur). This research suggests that
lying about an event may actually solidify the truth, as
opposed to undermine it, but that there may be individual
variability associated with this effect.
To further investigate explanations for the small subset
of participants who came to strongly believe their lies in
earlier research (Polage, 2004), Polage (2012) employed a
similar paradigm but assessed potential moderators associ-
ated with several underlying cognitive mechanisms. In the
follow-up study, lied-about events were associated with an
increase in belief ratings compared to control events,
termed “fabrication inflation”. Additionally, the study
revealed important information about individual differ-
ences that may be associated with an increased propensity
to believe self-generated lies. For example, lied-about
events were more likely to be believed later by remem-
berers who self-reported lying more often within any

given week, had higher levels of dissociation, and who
experienced greater discomfort while lying. Interestingly,
subsequent research discovered that just the thought of
having to lie or tell the truth about a past action had an
influence on memory for that action. Findings by Colwell
et al. (2011) demonstrated that when participants were
simply told that they will later be required to lie about
their action of entering a professor’s office (such as
whether they stole an exam key while in the office) after
having already committed the act, their memory for the
experience in the office was characterised by anxiety and
greater motivation to complete the task – even though
while in the office they were unaware of the fact that
they would later need to lie or tell the truth about this task.
Also, some research suggests that the effect of deliber-
ate misrepresentation of previously held opinions on one’s
memory may not be so clear-cut and may be a function of
certain target characteristics, such as attractiveness. Brady
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(2011) examined whether misrepresentation of attitudes
to either attractive or unattractive opposite-sex targets
altered one’s own memory for originally held opinions
(about a particular topic relevant to the student partici-
pants such as mandatory examinations). Indeed, when par-
ticipants were asked to report their original opinion about
the topic, after misrepresenting their opinion to an attrac-
tive member of the opposite sex (whom held a substan-
tially more positive opinion), participants’ originally
reported opinion was altered such that it was more positive
and more in line with the target’s opinion.
Although these findings refer to deliberate misrepre-
sentation of beliefs and attitudes, other research has
looked at the memorial consequences of deliberate lying
using a procedure analogous with the forced fabrication
research mentioned earlier. For example, in the only
study to our knowledge to do so, Pickel (2004) assessed
the effect of intentional lying (about the appearance of
either a perpetrator or witness from a videotaped crime)
on one’s memory. More specifically, participants assigned
to fabrication conditions were instructed to answer all
questions correctly except any questions about the
robber’s appearance (target fabrication condition) or the
clerk’s appearance (i.e., a witness; clerk fabrication con-
dition). For these questions, they were asked to construct
a false description. The authors found that participants
who fabricated details provided less correct information
(i.e., omission errors) and more incorrect information (i.e.,
commission errors) on a later memory test when instructed
to respond honestly based on their actual memory (relative
to truthful witnesses) but that any impairments to one’s
memory was directly related to the target of their fabrica-
tion.6 In other words, impaired memory of the perpetrator
(in the form of omission and commission errors) was
shown only when participants had been instructed earlier
to fabricate details of the perpetrator but no memory
impairment regarding the perpetrator’s appearance was
apparent for those who fabricated details about the
witness in the video – suggesting that it may be a target
MEMORY 7
specific effect rather than having a negative impact on
the memory more generally. Interestingly, approximately
one-third of fabricated details provided during the initial
interview were carried over to the questionnaire during
which participants were supposed to be answering truth-
fully based on what they remembered.7
Theoretical frameworks
The above-reviewed literature indicates that certain decep-
tive strategies are associated with different memorial out-
comes. A pertinent next question concerns the
underlying mechanisms responsible for these differences.
There are several theoretical perspectives that can help
shed light on the ways in which lying affects memory. If
we start by focusing on the memory effects of the arguably
least complex form of lying discussed here – that is, false
denials – then the work to date seems to suggest that
the act of falsely denying has adverse effects on memory
performance (e.g., Otgaar et al., 2016; Vieira & Lane,
2013). Specifically, there is evidence showing that false
denials lead to omissions for the content of stimuli but
only when compared to material that is studied and
rehearsed. Furthermore, a recent line of research has
demonstrated that false denials mainly impair memory
for what has been discussed during an interview. To
some extent, these memory effects are linked to memory
phenomena such as directed forgetting. The memory
effects associated with directed forgetting have been pri-
marily examined by using two methodologies (Basden,
Basden, & Gargano, 1993): the list method and the word
method. In the list method, participants are told to forget
a previously studied list of words before receiving a
second list of words which they are instead instructed to
remember. In the word method, participants receive
instructions to forget or remember each presented word.
The standard finding evidenced in both paradigms is that
participants are less likely to recollect words that received
a cue to forget than words that had to be remembered
(e.g., Bjork, 1972; Conway, Harries, Noyes, Racsma’ny, &
Frankish, 2000). The underlying mechanism associated
with the directed forgetting effect has commonly been
ascribed to retrieval inhibition (Anderson & Neely, 1996;
Levy & Anderson, 2002), such that the cue to forget
items inhibits the retrieval of those items thereby making
them less accessible when they need to be recollected.
Although studies on false denials do not explicitly instruct
participants to forget items, they might try not to think
about the items they have just witnessed and are falsely
denying as a strategy to aid their deceptive attempt.
Further, it has been shown that such “no think” processes
are related to retrieval inhibition which might lead to a
decrease of unwanted memories entering consciousness
(Anderson & Green, 2001; McWilliams, Goodman, Lyons,
Newton, & Avila-Mora, 2014).
An alternative explanation for the impaired memory
resulting from false denials might be that doing so leads
 8 H. OTGAAR AND A. BAKER
to a lack of rehearsal of details associated with the original
event. Studies on feigned amnesia have frequently attribu-
ted the deleterious memory effects of doing so to a lack of
rehearsal (e.g., Christianson & Bylin, 1999; Van Oorsouw &
Merckelbach, 2004), considering rehearsal of information
is one of the strongest ways to boost memory performance
(e.g., Dark & Loftus, 1976). According to the lack of rehear-
sal explanation, feigning amnesia and even falsely denying
might interfere with the rehearsal of information and this
may lead to impoverished memory of the original event.
Regarding feigned amnesia, Van Oorsouw and Merckel-
bach (2004) found support for this explanation during
a study examining differential memory performance for a
mock crime (i.e., knocking down a mannequin with a
pool cue and theft). The critical findings were that the
feigning amnesia and delayed testing group (those who
responded genuinely only one week after the event and
not directly after) remembered less about the event than
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the honestly responding group (those who responded
genuinely directly after the event and one week later),
but that there was no statistical difference in memory per-
formance between the feigning amnesia and delayed
testing group. As the latter group did not engage in elab-
orate rehearsal of the event, lack of rehearsal was proposed
as the most likely mechanism of the memory-undermining
effect associated with feigning amnesia.
Besides the theoretical explanations behind the effects
of false denials and feigned amnesia, both deceptive strat-
egies have shown to lead to some impairing effects of
memory. One potential commonality that may explain
why these deceptive strategies seem to lead to similar
memory effects is that the cognitive resources required
for both denying and feigning amnesia are quite low (rela-
tively speaking). That is, a person who denies or feigns
amnesia uses a rather simple strategy (e.g., “I did not
steal anything”, “I cannot remember”) which does not
require as many cognitive resources as fabricating an
entire story, for example. Indeed, as evidenced by forced
fabrication studies, other and more elaborate forms of
lying can draw substantially on our available cognitive
resources and appear to lead to the occurrence and report-
ing of false details and memories.
A dominant theoretical framework that has been used
to explain findings of reported false details and memories
is the source monitoring framework (SMF; Johnson, Hash-
troudi, & Lindsay, 1993) which elucidates the processes
involved in making attributions concerning the origins of
memories. Source monitoring refers to the processes
needed to differentiate between memories from various
sources, such as internal (e.g., thoughts, dreams, and
imaginations) and external (e.g., statements from
someone else) sources. To monitor and differentiate
these sources, several characteristics of memories and
judgmental processes come into play. The SMF posits
that, on average, memories for perceived events contain
more perceptual (e.g., sound and colour), contextual (e.g.,
spatial and temporal), and affective (e.g., emotions) than
memories for imagined events (i.e., those that are internally
generated) which are assumed to contain more references
to cognitive operations (e.g., elaboration and retrieval).
According to this framework, when people have to judge
whether a memory refers to an experienced or imagined
event, they will automatically attribute its status from the
characteristics of the memory in question. Subsequently,
source monitoring errors occur, for example, when a
memory for an imagined event contains the same details
(e.g., perceptual and contextual) as a memory for an experi-
enced event which might lead to an imagined event being
misattributed to an experienced event. In such case, a false
memory is produced.
Source monitoring is relevant to the current discussion
because in several studies mentioned earlier, participants
were instructed to confabulate a false answer or even fab-
ricate an entire story. Such fabrications require many cog-
nitive resources in the sense that rememberers have to
come up with new details while thinking about what
truly happened. The mere act of such fabrications can
lead to an increase in characteristics (perceptual, affective,
etc.) that are diagnostic of memories of experienced events
because rememberers often rely on true past events or
schemas to generate their false description and, hence,
might lead to the creation of false memories. Sub-
sequently, the side effect of increasing cognitive resources
during deceptive attempts such as fabrication is that the
lying will have similar characteristics as genuine memories.
Indeed, a wealth of research on the imagination
inflation effect has shown that imagining non-experienced
events can elevate true memory characteristics such as
sensory details (e.g., Thomas, Bulevich, & Loftus, 2003).
Scientific work on implanted false memories has produced
similar findings; that is, participants who receive the sug-
gestion from an interviewer that they experienced a false
childhood event and subsequently have to imagine experi-
encing that event later falsely report experiencing it. The
standard finding is that 30–40% of participants fall prey
for this suggestion (e.g., Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Otgaar, Sco-
boria, & Smeets, 2013; Shaw & Porter, 2015; Porter & Baker,
2015; Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002). The same might
apply for deceptive strategies such as fabrication. When
participants are instructed to lie and tell a false story, this
story might have the contours and characteristics of a
memory for an experienced event. Of course, studies
using the forced confabulation procedure provide a good
demonstration of fabrications leading to false memory
(e.g., Ackil & Zaragoza, 2011; Nourkova, Bernstein, &
Loftus, 2004; Van Oorsouw & Giesbrecht, 2008). In these
studies, participants misattribute a made-up detail as
something that they viewed during an encoding phase
and it’s likely that this source misattribution happens
because the false details consist of similar memory charac-
teristics of authentic details. Evidence of this suggestion is
that previous lies that participants generated during first
session interviews have been found to be highly related
to the experienced mock crime and it was found that

story length of the fabrication was positively related to the
number of commissions (Van Oorsouw & Giesbrecht, 2008).
A related study in which entire fabricated stories
resulted in the formation of false memories and, impor-
tantly, provide theoretical support for the role of source
monitoring was conducted by Chroback and Zaragoza
(2008). Specifically, participants had to view a movie and,
two days later, had to answer several questions concerning
the movie (some of which referred to details from a section
of the video that was actually not presented during the
viewing). Participants who received these false event ques-
tions were instructed to describe fictitious events that they
had never seen but that were related to the progression of
the movie. At an eight-week memory test many partici-
pants recalled having seen their own fabricated stories
during the presentation of the movie – a finding that can
be explained by relying on the SMF. That is, when partici-
pants fabricated a portion of the story, following a delay
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they are unable to monitor the source of those details
and, because the fabricated stories were related to the
actual movie, source monitoring failures were more likely
to occur. Interestingly, the explanation provided by Chro-
back and Zaragoza (2012) was that the fabricated stories
helped participants to achieve a causal explanation for
the encoded stimuli they had witnessed. In this way, par-
ticipants obtained a coherent account of the perceived
event. By doing so, the fabricated stories resulted in a
more complete and richer explanation of what occurred
during the event (i.e., the movie) which may also be a ten-
dency for those lying about forensically relevant events.
Similar findings emerge from related research on the
effects of speculation on children’s memory (Schreiber,
Wentura, & Bilsky, 2001), arguably another form of intern-
ally generated misinformation. The principal finding was
that after 5–6 months, children (aged three to six years
old) falsely remembered that their own speculative
answers occurred during a clown show event that they
had previously witnessed. Collectively, the research to
date on fabrication and even speculation indicates that
source monitoring failures may be the cause of the
obtained effects in the studies.
Memory and deception (MAD) framework
Based on the findings and theoretical accounts discussed
above, a picture is emerging regarding under which cir-
cumstances lying leads to omissions or commissions
(false memories), and what underlying mechanisms may
be responsible for these memory outcomes. In Figure 2,
we propose a theoretical framework illustrating memory
outcomes as a function of different deceptive strategies.
In this MAD framework, we consider the different
memory outcomes and lying strategies as being part of a
continuum. More specifically, we conceptualise the act of
lying as on a continuum such that different types of lies
vary in the degree of cognitive resources that they
require which helps to predict when lying leads to
MEMORY 9
omissions or commissions. For example, one can exert a
simple lie that does not draw many cognitive resources
such as a false denial or simply feigning amnesia (“I do
not remember”) whereas telling more detailed lies that
entail fabricating details (forced confabulation) or even
entire stories requires more cognitive resources. We
acknowledge that the boundaries associated with the
types of lying are not clearly defined and that using strat-
egies in tandem alters the complexity and amount of
resources. However, we postulate that when the draw
of cognitive resources is less (such as in simple versions
of false denials), issues such as a lack of rehearsal come
into play and lead to omissions but, when more cognitive
resources are required, participants must remember
exactly what they lied about and remain consistent. As a
result, the threat of source monitoring errors is lurking
which potentially leads to commission errors/false
memories.
A secondary component of the current MAD framework
is the way in which deceptive strategies alter beliefs. There
is a plethora of research showing that when participants
are asked to imagine a fictitious childhood event, this
increases the belief that the event was actually experi-
enced by themselves (e.g., Garry, Manning, Loftus, &
Sherman, 1996) and preliminary research on fabrication
has found that it can lead to increases in belief that the
false event took place (Polage, 2012). Again, this idea is
consistent with the SMF but is also linked with a new line
of research showing that believing in the occurrence of
an event is the first step in recollecting that the event
occurred (Otgaar, Scoboria, & Mazzoni, 2014; Scoboria,
Memon, Gawrylowicz, & Clark, 2015). Arguably, such
increases in belief may contribute to changes in recollec-
tion when repeated deceptive attempts are used.
Although this MAD model provides a general idea of
how lying affects memory for past experiences, this
model is a starting point for future research endeavours
and, as such, needs refinement as our understanding of
the relationship between lying and memory develops.
For example, one ill-explored issue is elucidating the mech-
anism behind DIF (see Figure 2). Secondly, some studies
have shown that feigning amnesia leads to omissions or
commissions but the exact reason for this remains
unclear. Although the most probable explanation for
these divergent effects is that commission errors only
occur when participants fabricate details in addition to
feigning amnesia, this issue has not been empirically
tested to such an extent yet. Third, one might argue that
false denials and fabrication differ on many other dimen-
sions and that they can impact memory performance as
well. For example, one issue that is relevant here is what
or how much precisely is denied or fabricated. Specifically,
a victim of repeated sexual abusive incidents might simply
use the strategy to deny all occasions or could choose to
deny a certain event. One might assume that the first
denial (complete false denial) requires fewer cognitive
resources than the second one because in the second
 10 H. OTGAAR AND A. BAKER
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Figure 2. Theoretical memory and deception (MAD) framework outlining the memorial effects as a function of type of lying.
denial the victim has to simultaneously make sure that he/
she is denying a specific event and, for example, disclosing
the other episodes. Of course, future research should
examine other factors that might affect the act of false
denials and fabrication and their influence on memory.
Future directions and predictions
A logical next step to examine the predictive value of MAD
is to conduct a study in which the effects of different
deceptive strategies (false denial, feigning amnesia, and
fabrication) on memory are examined at once. Such a
study could provide a more advanced understanding and
may provide additional evidence that false memory pro-
duction is elevated when lying involves more cognitive
resources. Further, to thoroughly investigate the role of
cognitive resources, an interesting next direction would
be to manipulate the amount of cognitive resources
required in a more refined way, by making simple lies
such as false denials more elaborate (thereby requiring
more cognitive resources). According to the MAD frame-
work, omissions likely occur when a false denial is quite
simple (e.g., “that did not occur”) but commissions may
actually be elicited by false denials when they become
more elaborate by adding an alternative account (e.g.,
“that did not occur because I was on a holiday and could
not be there”).
Future research also can address individual deceptive
strategies and subsequent effects on memory to help
refine our current understanding. For example, the appar-
ent different results between studies on false denials and
memory provides an opportunity for further investigation.
More specifically, there have been discrepancies in regards
to whether false denials lead to forgetting of what was lied
about or a more global forgetting such as forgetting details
associated with how/when the lie was told. For example,
memory of the interview was affected by the act of
falsely denying in the studies on DIF (Otgaar et al., 2016),
while other research found subtle forgetting effects of
the falsely denied stimuli (Vieira & Lane, 2013). Sub-
sequently, the features by which this forgetting effect
exists needs to be researched further.
Similarly, another relevant research avenue concerns
the effects of feigning amnesia on memory. As can be
seen in the MAD framework, the evidence so far seems
to show that feigning amnesia leads to omissions but
there also is research showing that it might lead to false
memories/commissions (Van Oorsouw & Giesbrecht,

2008). Importantly, past studies often fail to differentiate
between feigned amnesia and fabrication; that is, instruc-
tions given to participants do not necessarily reflect com-
plete (or even partial) amnesia. Moreover, the studies
seem to suggest that participants may have employed
strategies of withholding the truth which are more
similar to fabrication than amnesia. For example, Christian-
son and Bylin (1999) instructed participants to “describe in
writing the course of events so as to evade responsibility,
as if you did not remember very well”. Although sub-
sequent research did a relatively better job by being
more specific with instruction, such as “minimize your
responsibility by simulating a memory disorder. Thus, try
to describe events in such a way so it looked like you
have great difficulties in remembering what happened”
(Van Oorsouw & Merckelbach, 2004) and “feign amnesia”
(Van Oorsouw & Merckelbach, 2006), the available option
of providing a fabricated alternative story is still present
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in both cases. Indeed, one study reported that one-third
of participants instructed to “feign amnesia” claimed their
strategy for doing so was to provide an alternative
account of how the events happened (Van Oorsouw &
Merckelbach, 2006). Providing further evidence of the sug-
gestion that both attempts at feigning amnesia and fabri-
cation may be occurring, Sun et al. (2009) found that
those instructed to feign amnesia made significantly
more intrusion errors on the initial memory test than com-
parison groups. Although it could be argued that this is
representative of simulated amnesia claims outside of the
lab, such that offenders may claim amnesia for certain
aspects of an experience while simultaneously fabricating
other aspects, it clouds interpretation because we are
unable to determine what findings are being generated
by feigning amnesia and which are being driven by
active fabrication of details. For example, it could be specu-
lated that findings of increased commission errors (e.g.,
Van Oorsouw & Merckelbach, 2006) may be due to fabrica-
tion and may not be appropriately attributed to feigning
amnesia. In sum, to what degree fabrication versus feign-
ing amnesia contributes to the mnemonic effects found
in previous studies is not adequately teased apart which
is worthwhile because fabrication seems to have different
effects on memory than feigning amnesia.
Relatedly, the issue of simulating amnesia can be con-
sidered to fall under the more general umbrella theme of
malingering and the current discussion is linked to recent
research concerning the residual effects of other types of
malingering (e.g., Merckelbach, Dandachi-Fitzgerald, Van
Mulken, Ponds, & Niesten, 2015; Merckelbach, Jelicic, &
Pieters, 2011). Malingering in a medical and legal setting
refers to the feigning of symptoms motivated by external
reasons (e.g., financial compensation; American Psychiatric
Association, 2000) and thus can be treated as a type of lie.
Previous studies have found that the exaggeration (or fab-
rication) of symptoms leads to adoption of non-existing
symptoms. For example, Merckelbach et al. (2011; Exper-
iment 1) found that those assigned to a feigning condition
MEMORY 11
(required to feign symptoms of a serious psychological
condition in a credible way whereas control participants
had to respond honestly), later reported significantly higher
symptoms at the second testing session (when asked to
respond honestly) than the control group. The authors con-
cluded that this finding suggests there is a residual effect of
feigning symptoms which aligns well with the proposed
MAD framework; that is, the prediction based on the MAD
model is that when fabrication occurs, people tend to
adopt their own fabrications. However, a logical next step
would be to assess what would occur when participants
are instructed to deny symptoms. Although perhaps not so
relevant for forensic purposes, it would be of theoretically
importance and, according to MAD, would result in a
decrease in the reporting of symptoms.
Finally, our argument is that forced confabulation, a
component of the MAD framework, parallels certain other
types of lies. One obvious candidate is the domain of false
alibis. That is, in legal contexts, it is not uncommon that wit-
nesses and offenders provide false alibis to increase their
credibility (Allison, Mathews, & Michael, 2012). However,
what happens with their memories when a truthful
account is provided after the fact is unknown at the
moment (see for a related issue; Sauerland, Mehlkopf, Krix,
& Sagana, 2016). We would predict that creating a false
alibi requires cognitive resources and might lead to the cre-
ation of distorted beliefs and even false memories. As such,
the work of false alibis would be highly related to work on
forced fabrications. One other field in which the effects of
lying on memory can be examined is work on children’s
recantations (e.g., Malloy, Mugno, Rivard, Lyon, & Quas, in
press). In many child sexual abuse cases, children report to
have been abused, but some time after this, recant their
initial claims. Such recantations are closely linked to false
denials. Studies have shown that recantation rates can be
as high as 25% in substantiated child sexual abuse cases
(Malloy, Lyon, & Quas, 2007). The crucial question here is
what the impact is of such recantations on children’s
memory for the original events. As they can be seen as
(false) denials, our expectation would be that such recanta-
tions would have adverse effects on memory and might
lead to omission errors.
Conclusion
The present discussion began with the conundrum about
the effects of lying on memory. After assembling the
current state of knowledge in this domain, the most compel-
ling answer appears to be that it depends on the type of
lying and how many cognitive resources are involved.
More specifically, details constructed via lying can become
a (false) memory, but this seems to only be the case in
those situations when rememberers use a deceptive tactic
that involves many cognitive resources such as fabricating
a story. When a type of lying is used that does not involve
many cognitive resources, our review of the literature indi-
cates that is more likely to lead to omissions.
 12 H. OTGAAR AND A. BAKER
To our knowledge, the current review is the first com-
prehensive synopsis on the effects of lying on memory.
Given the various motivations perpetrators, victims, or wit-
nesses may have to withhold the truth about crime-rel-
evant details of probative significance, we consider the
current discussion as being of great value to investigative
settings. Indeed, much of the reviewed studies have
been conducted from a pure applied legal interest, such
as the issue of feigning amnesia in offenders or false
denials of abuse by victims. Our outline of these studies
suggests that besides looking at external factors (e.g., sug-
gestive interviewing tactics) that might hamper statements
of witnesses, victims, and offenders, it is also important to
investigate whether lying might have played a role in their
statements. If there are indications that statements have
been altered dramatically, like when an alleged victim
has denied being abused and then after many years
comes forward with the statements, then the current dis-
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cussion can inform professionals concerning the quality
of such statements. Deceptive strategies of these kinds
can have serious legal ramifications as threats to the
reliability of memory in a criminal context may contribute
to deserving offenders avoiding punishment and sub-
sequently risking public safety. Our view is that by
synthesising the existing literature and summarising our
current understanding of the effects of one’s own lies
on memory for past experiences future research addres-
sing gaps in our empirical understanding of this impor-
tant and forensically relevant relationship will be
encouraged.
Notes
1. In this paper, we use the definition of lying provided by Vrij
(2008, p. 15): “a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt,
without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the
communicator considers to be untrue”.
2. Although typical cognitive models describe lying as inhibiting
the truth, choosing the lie, and executing the lie, we will be
referring to this process as “withholding the truth” to be
more encompassing of the different deceptive strategies of
interest to the current discussion.
3. We will be consistently using the term feigning amnesia but
consider it to be the same as simulated amnesia, another com-
monly used term.
4. We will be referring to confabulation and fabrication synony-
mously throughout the paper, in line with most of the
literature.
5. Similar findings were maintained at the five-week time interval
in Experiment 2.
6. Importantly, a no rehearsal condition performed better than
the fabrication condition – evidence that suggests the effect
of impaired memory did not simply occur due to lack of
rehearsal.
7. A second study conducted by Pickel (2004) assessed how the
magnitude of this effect compared to misinformation supplied
by another person and found that participants exposed to fab-
ricated information generated by an external source carried
over more false details to the later memory test; however,
overall accuracy of memory did not differ between the self-
generated and other-generated fabrication groups.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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