284  Chapter 6

Classic Studies in Psychology

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is an internationally
known expert on the accuracy of eyewitness
testimony. She is often called on to testify in
court cases.
Elizabeth Loftus and Eyewitnesses
Elizabeth Loftus is a distinguished professor of social ecology, a professor of law, and a pro-
fessor of cognitive science at the University of California in Irvine. For more than 30 years,
Dr. Loftus has been one of the world’s leading researchers in the area of memory. Her focus
has been on the accuracy of recall of memories—or rather, the inaccuracies of memory
retrieval. She has been an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of trials, including that
of Ted Bundy, the serial killer who eventually was executed in Florida (Neimark, 1996).
Loftus and many others have demonstrated time and again that memory is not an
unchanging, stable process but rather is a constantly changing one. People continually
update and revise their memories of events without being aware that they are doing so,
and they incorporate information gained after the actual event, whether correct or incorrect.
Here is a summary of one of Loftus’s classic studies concerning the ways in which
eyewitness testimony can be influenced by information given after the event in question
(Loftus, 1975).
In this experiment, Loftus showed subjects a 3-minute video clip taken from the movie.
In this clip, eight demonstrators run into a classroom and eventually leave after interrupting
the professor’s lecture in a noisy confrontation. At the end of the video, two questionnaires
were distributed containing one key question and 90 “filler” questions. The key question for
half of the subjects was, “Was the leader of the four demonstrators who entered the class-
room a male?” The other half were asked, “Was the leader of the twelve demonstrators
who entered the classroom a male?” One week later, a new set of questions was given to
all subjects in which the key question was, “How many demonstrators did you see entering
the classroom?” Subjects who were previously asked the question incorrectly giving the
number as “four” stated an average recall of 6.4 people, whereas those who were asked
the question incorrectly giving the number as “twelve” recalled an average of 8.9 peo-
ple. Loftus concluded that subjects were trying to compromise the memory of what they
had actually seen—eight demonstrators—with later information. This study, along with the
Father Pagano story and many others, clearly demonstrates the heart of Loftus’s research:
What people see and hear about an event after the fact can easily affect the accuracy of
their memories of that event.

Questions for Further Discussion

1. How might police officers taking statements about a crime avoid getting inaccurate
information from eyewitnesses?
2. The Innocence Project (www.innocenceproject.org) helps prisoners prove their
innocence through DNA testing. More than 300 people in the United States have been
freed by this testing, and the average time they served in prison before release is
13 years. Is eyewitness testimony enough, or should DNA evidence be required for
sending someone to prison?

Automatic Encoding: Flashbulb Memories

6.8 Describe how some memories are automatically encoded into long-term
memory.
Although some long-term memories need extensive maintenance rehearsal or effortful
encoding in the form of elaborative rehearsal to enter from STM into LTM, many other
kinds of long-term memories seem to enter permanent storage with little or no effort at all,
 Memory  285

in a kind of automatic encoding (Kvavilashvili et al., 2009; Mandler, 1967; Schneider et al.,
1984). People unconsciously notice and seem able to remember a lot of things, such as the
passage of time, knowledge of physical space, and frequency of events. For example, a
person might make no effort to remember how many times cars have passed down the
street but when asked can give an answer of “often,” “more than usual,” or “hardly any.”
A special kind of automatic encoding takes place when an unexpected event or
episode in a person’s life has strong emotional associations, such as fear, horror, or joy.
­Memories of highly emotional events can often seem vivid and detailed, as if the ­person’s
mind took a “flash picture” of the moment in time. These kinds of memories are called
flashbulb memories (Hirst & Phelps, 2016; Kraha & Boals, 2014; Neisser, 1982; Neisser &
Harsch, 1992; Winningham et al., 2000).
Many people share certain flashbulb memories. People of the “baby boomer”
generation remember exactly where they were when the news came that President
John F. Kennedy had been shot or the moment that Neil Armstrong first stepped on
the surface of the moon. Younger generations may remember the horrific events of
­S eptember 11, 2001, and the disastrous Hurricane Katrina. But personal flashbulb
memories also exist. These memories tend to be major positive or negative emotional
events, such as the first date, graduation, an embarrassing event, or a particularly
memorable ­birthday party.
Why do flashbulb memories seem so vivid and exact? The answer lies in the emo-
tions felt at the time of the event. Emotional reactions stimulate the release of hormones
that have been shown to enhance the formation of long-term memories (­Dolcos et al.,
2005; McEwen, 2000; McGaugh, 2004; Sharot et al., 2004). But is this kind of memory
really all that accurate? Although some researchers have found evidence for a high
degree of accuracy in flashbulb memories of major events, such as the reelection of
­President Barack Obama in November 2012 or the tragic death of actor and comedian
Robin Williams in 2014, others have found that while flashbulb memories are often con-
Robin Williams died on August 11, 2014.
vincingly real, they are just as subject to decay and alterations over time as other kinds His suicide shocked a multitude of fans and
of memories (­Neisser & Harsch, 1992). In fact, memory of highly stressful events such as admirers. Events like this are so emotional
experiencing a crime has been shown to be less accurate than other memories (Loftus, for many people that the memories for the
1975). Apparently, no memories are completely accurate after the passage of time. The event are stored automatically, as if the mind
had taken a “flash” picture of that moment
next section will discuss some of the reasons for faulty memories.
in time. Such “flashbulb” memories seem to
be very accurate but are actually no more
The Reconstructive Nature Of Long-Term Memory Retrieval: How accurate than any other memory.
Reliable Are Memories?
6.9 Explain how the constructive processing view of memory retrieval accounts
for forgetting and inaccuracies in memory.

I think my memory is pretty good, but my brother and I often

have arguments about things that happened when we were kids.
Why don’t we have the same exact memories? We were both there!

People tend to assume that their memories are accurate when, in fact, memories are
revised, edited, and altered on an almost continuous basis. The reason for the changes automatic encoding
that occur in memory has to do with the way in which memories are formed as well as tendency of certain kinds of informa-
how they are retrieved. tion to enter longterm memory with
little or no effortful encoding.
Constructive Processing of Memories Many people have the idea that when
they recall a memory, they are recalling it as if it were an “instant replay.” As new flashbulb memories
memories are created in LTM, old memories can get “lost,” but they are more likely to type of automatic encoding that
be changed or altered in some way (Baddeley, 1988). In reality, memories (including occurs because an unexpected event
those very vivid flashbulb memories) are never quite accurate, and the more time that has strong emotional associations for
passes, the more inaccuracies creep in. The early twentieth-century memory schema the person remembering it.
286  Chapter 6
These men may engage in “Monday
morning quarterbacking” as they apply
hindsight to their memories of this game.
Their memories of the game may be altered
by information they get afterward from the
television, newspapers, or their friends.
constructive processing
referring to the retrieval of memories
in which those memories are altered,
revised, or influenced by newer
information.
hindsight bias
the tendency to falsely believe,
through revision of older memories to
include newer information, that one
could have correctly predicted the out-
come of an event.
misinformation effect
the tendency of misleading informa-
tion presented after an event to alter
the memories of the event itself.
theorist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932) saw the process of memory as more similar to creat-
ing a story than reading one already written. He viewed memory as a problem-solving
activity in which the person tries to retrieve the particulars of some past event (the
problem) by using current knowledge and inferring from evidence to create the mem-
ory (the solution; Kihlstrom, 2002).
Elizabeth Loftus, along with other researchers (Hyman, 1993; Hyman & Loftus,
1998, 2002), has provided ample evidence for the constructive processing view of mem-
ory retrieval. In this view, memories are literally “built,” or reconstructed, from the infor-
mation stored away during encoding. Each time a memory is retrieved, it may be altered
or revised in some way to include new information or to exclude details that may be left
out of the new reconstruction.
An example of how memories are reconstructed occurs when people, upon learn-
ing the details of a particular event, revise their memories to reflect their feeling that
they “knew it all along.” They will discard any incorrect information they actually had
and replace it with more accurate information gained after the fact. This tendency of
people to falsely believe that they would have accurately predicted an outcome without
having been told about it in advance is called hindsight bias (Bahrick et al., 1996; Hof-
frage et al., 2000). People who have ever done some “Monday morning quarterbacking”
by saying that they knew all along who would win the game have fallen victim to hind-
sight bias.
Thinking Critically
Think about the last time you argued with a family member about something that happened when you
were younger. How might hindsight bias have played a part in your differing memories of the event?
Memory Retrieval Problems Some people may say that they have “total recall.” What
they usually mean is that they feel that their memories are more accurate than those of other
people. As should be obvious by now, true total recall is not a very likely ability for anyone
to have. Here are some reasons people have trouble recalling information accurately.
The Misinformation Effect Police investigators sometimes try to keep eyewitnesses
to crimes or accidents from talking with each other. The reason is that if one person tells
the other about something she has seen, the other person may later “remember” that
same detail, even though he did not actually see it at the time. Such false memories are
created by a person being exposed to information after the event. That misleading infor-
mation can become part of the actual memory, affecting its accuracy (Loftus et al., 1978).
This is called the misinformation effect. Loftus, in addition to her studies concerning
eyewitness testimony, has also done several similar studies that demonstrate the misin-
formation effect. In one study, subjects viewed a slide presentation of a traffic accident.
The actual slide presentation contained a stop sign, but in a written summary of the pre-
sentation, the sign was referred to as a yield sign. Subjects who were given this mislead-
ing information after viewing the slides were far less accurate in their memories for the
kind of sign present than were subjects given no such information. One of the interesting
points made by this study is that information that comes not only after the original event
but also in an entirely different format (i.e., ­written instead of visual) can cause memories
of the event to be incorrectly reconstructed.
False memory syndrome If memory gets edited and changed when individuals are in
a state of waking consciousness, alert and making an effort to retrieve information, how
much more might memory be changed when individuals are being influenced by others
or in an altered state of consciousness, such as hypnosis? False-memory syndrome refers to
the creation of inaccurate or false memories through the suggestion of others, often while
 Memory  287

the person is under hypnosis (Frenda et al., 2014; Hochman, 1994; Laney & Loftus, 2013;
Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
For example, research has shown that, although hypnosis may make it easier to
recall some real memories, it also makes it easier to create false memories. Hypnosis
also has been found to increase the confidence people have in their memories, regard-
less of whether those memories are real or false (Bowman, 1996). False memories have
been accidentally created by therapists’ suggestions during hypnotic therapy sessions.
to Learning Objective 4.9. For more information on false-memory syndrome,
visit the Web site at www.fmsfonline.org.
Research suggests that false memories are created in the brain in much the same
way as real memories are formed, especially when visual images are involved (­Gonsalves
et al., 2004). Researchers, using fMRI scans, looked at brain activity of individuals who
were looking at real visual images and then were asked to imagine looking at visual
images. They found that these same individuals were often unable to later distinguish
between the images they had really seen and the imagined images when asked to
remember which images were real or imagined. This might explain why asking people
if they saw a particular person at a crime scene (causing them to imagine the image of
that person) might affect the memories those people have of the crime when questioned
sometime later—the person they were asked to think about may be falsely remembered
as having been present. Other evidence suggests that false memories have much in com-
mon with the confabulations (stories that are made up but not intended to deceive) of
people with dementia-related memory problems and that both forms of false memories
involve a lower-than-normal level of activity in the part of the frontal lobe associated
with doubt and skepticism (Mendez & Fras, 2011). Clearly, memories obtained through
hypnosis should not be considered accurate without solid evidence from other sources.

But I’ve heard about people who under hypnosis remember

being abused as children. Aren’t those memories sometimes real?

The fact that some people recover false memories under certain conditions does not
mean that child molestation does not really happen; nor does it mean that a person who
was molested might not push that unwanted memory away from conscious thought.
Molestation is a sad fact, with one conservative estimate stating that nearly 20 percent
of all females and 7 percent of all males have experienced molestation during childhood
(Abel & Osborn, 1992). There are also many therapists and psychological professionals
who are quite skilled at helping clients remember events of the past without suggest-
ing possible false memories, and they find that clients do remember information and
events that were true and able to be verified but were previously unavailable to the client
(Dalenberg, 1996). False-memory syndrome is not only harmful to the persons directly
involved but also makes it much more difficult for genuine victims of molestation to be
believed when they do recover their memories of the painful traumas of childhood.
So can we trust any of our memories at all? There is evidence to suggest that false
memories cannot be created for just any kind of memory content. The memories must
at least be plausible, according to the research of cognitive psychologist and memory
expert Kathy Pezdek, who with her colleagues has done several studies demonstrating
the resistance of children to the creation of implausible false memories (Hyman et al., As this young woman observes the activity
1998; Pezdek et al., 1997; Pezdek & Hodge, 1999). outside the window, she is storing some
In the 1999 study, Pezdek and Hodge asked children to read five different summaries of the things she sees in memory while
ignoring others. If she were to witness a
of childhood events. Two of these events were false, but only one of the two false events was
crime, how would investigators know if her
plausible (e.g., getting lost). Although the children all were told that all of the events hap- memories of the events were accurate?
pened to them as small children, the results indicated that the plausible false events were Would hypnotizing her to help her remember
significantly more likely to be “remembered” as false memories than were the implausible be effective? Why or why not?