Laney et al.

(Asparagus, a Love Story)

False memory
Background: General
• Human memory is subject to many types and levels of
distortion. People’s memories of the events of their own lives
can be incorrect.

• No one had looked at whether false memories could be

created or implanted for positive events and experiences.
Background: General
Example:
President Donald
Trump said of his
inauguration, “I turn on
one of the networks,
and they show an
empty field, I'm like,
wait a minute. I made a
speech. I looked out,
the field was, it looked
like a million, million
and a half people.” Obama:2009 Trump:2017
Background: General
Example:
This is obviously an example of a false memory, as the facts do
not align with the belief.
From all of the stored information, people can reconstruct
“memories” for events, for example by “filling in the gaps” and
using false information that gets embedded in actual
information.
Background: General
Elizabeth F. Loftus is a cognitive psychologist and expert on
human memory, here are just some of the questions she has
answered.
Can eyewitness Can you make Can you convince
memory can be someone believe someone that
altered by that they were they meet Bugs
Yes!
information Yes!
lost as a child, but Yes!
Bunny at
supplied to them it never really Disneyland, even
after an event? happened? though Bugs
Bunny is not a
Disney character?
Asparagus, a Love Story
(Part 1)
Why Asparagus?
• Asparagus was chosen because it is a healthy vegetable with a rather
sophisticated taste, and thus not a food that most children immediately like
(or that most adults assume they liked as children).

• Also, they expected that many subjects would enter the study with low
confidence that they had liked asparagus the first time they tried it, and that
the suggestion would increase that confidence.
Aims:
• To investigate whether positive false memories for loving asparagus can be
implanted into people and then change their childhood memories of liking
asparagus.

• To investigate the consequences of implanting positive false memories in

terms of the effects it has on liking asparagus and choosing asparagus.
Sample:
• A total of undergraduate students were used in the study (from
the University of California) and they all received course credits for
participating. (Volunteers).

• Of the participants, were female. The mean age of participants

was years.

• They were randomly assigned to the “love” group or the control

group They were run in groups of 8.
Procedure:
• Once they had arrived at the laboratory, participants were told
that they would be completing a series of questionnaires to help
study the relationship between food preferences and personality.

• To limit the influence of demand characteristics, they were not

told anything about false memories.
• There were two main questionnaires. The first was the Food
History Inventory (FHI) consisting of 24 items. The 16th item was
crucial: it read “Loved asparagus the first time you tried it”. All
statements were rated on the same scale from 1 = definitely
didn’t happen, to 8 = definitely did happen before the age of 10.
Procedure:
• The second was a Restaurant Questionnaire (RQ) that assessed
the desire to eat 32 separate dishes. Included in this was the
critical item of “sautéed asparagus spears”. The questionnaire
was laid out like a menu with appetisers, soups, desserts, etc.
• Participants had to rate how likely it was that they would order
each item, regardless of price. The scale was 1 = definitely no to
8 = definitely yes.

• Participants completed three other questionnaires as “fillers”,

relating to personality, eating habits and social desirability, to
disguise the true aim of the study.
Procedure:
• Approximately a week later all participants returned. They were
given false feedback about their responses to the original
questionnaire.

• They were told (falsely) that their responses had been entered
into a computer program which had generated a profile of their
early childhood experiences with food.
• Profiles were presented as if they had been individually tailored
to each participant. A section of the profile was exactly the same
for everyone: “as a young child you disliked spinach, enjoyed
fried foods and liked it when fellow classmates brought sweets
into class.”
Procedure:
• For the love group another additional critical item was added:
“you loved to eat cooked asparagus.” To make sure that all
participants had processed these statements, all had to respond
to brief questions about the sweets statement.
• Additionally, the love group also answered questions about
asparagus.
• They were asked “Imagine the setting in which this experience
happened. Where were you? Who was with you?” Then, using a
scale of 1 = not at all to 9 = very much, participants rated how
much the experience had affected their personality.
Procedure:
• Following this, all participants completed FHI and RQ again.
• Then two new questionnaires were completed. The first was a
Food Preferences Questionnaire (FPQ) on which they had to rate
62 food items (including asparagus) on a scale of 1 = definitely
don’t like to eat it (for whatever reason) to 8 definitely like to eat
it.
• The second was a Food Costs Questionnaire (FCQ) on which, for
21 different food items, participants had to indicate whether they
would buy each item and, if so, how much they would be willing
to pay for it.
Procedure:
• They had to choose one of seven statements ranging from
“would never buy it” to “would buy it at $5.70”. One of the food
items was a 1lb (454 grams) of asparagus.
• The final measure was taken via a questionnaire called memory
belief (M/B).
• Participants had to respond to three items from the FHI (including
the asparagus item) by choosing one of the following

(a) had a specific memory of the event;

(b) had a belief that the event occurred (but no specific memory);
(c) was positive that the event had not occurred.
Results:
• FHI. Excluded from the analysis were 31 participants (17 in the love
group) as they were reasonably sure that they did like asparagus
before the manipulation.

• The mean rating in the love group increased 2.6 points (participants
in this group were more confident that they loved asparagus). For
those in the control group the increase was 0.2 points.

• M/B. For the love group, 22% of participants indicated a memory

and 35% indicated a belief, leaving 43% reporting that they were
positive that the event had not occurred.
Results:
• In the control group, 12% reported a memory, 28% a belief and 61%
that the event had not occurred. This was in the predicted direction
but it did not reach significance (p=0.09).

• Believers are those who are susceptible to manipulation. If a

participant rated the critical FHI item low the first time but then
increased the rating the second time and stated memory or belief,
the participant was classified as a believer.
Results:
• The remainder were non-believers. It was found that 48% were
believers. The critical FHI item rating for believers increased an
average of 4.5 points and for the non-believers it increased by 0.9
points. Believers were analysed again based on memory versus
belief. Those who had a memory increased on average by 5.5 points
and for those with a belief it was 3.6 points. This result was
statistically significant (p=0.03).

• Consequences of false beliefs. On the RQ, believers reported more

desire to eat asparagus than the control group (p=0.001). On the
FPQ, believers reported liking asparagus significantly more than the
control group (0.001).
Results:
• For the FCQ measure, believers were willing to pay significantly more
for the asparagus than the control group (p=0.02).
Conclusion:
• According to Laney “…subjects can be lead to develop positively
framed false beliefs about experiences with foods, and that those
beliefs can lead to increased liking of those foods.”

• The love group believers had a greater intention to eat asparagus in

future in a restaurant.

• They also had a greater preference for asparagus. Finally, they were
even willing to pay more for asparagus.
Asparagus, a Love Story
(Part 2)
Aims:
To investigate the consequences of implanting positive false memories in terms
of the effects it has on liking asparagus and choosing asparagus.
There were two specific aims:

• To replicate the findings from experiment 1.

• To examine a possible underlying mechanism of false memories by looking at

whether the sight of asparagus is more appealing to people after the false
manipulation about asparagus.
Sample:
• Participants were 103 undergraduates from the university of
Washington; 62% were female and the overall mean age was 19.9
years. (Volunteers).

• They received course credits for participating. They were assigned

to either the love group (n = 58) or the control group (n = 45).
Procedure: Session 1
• On arriving at the laboratory, participants were told that their
data would be entered into a computer that would generate a
profile of them.

• No cover story was given. They all completed the FHI and FPQ
and the RQ. In a similar procedure to that used in experiment 1
to try to disguise the true nature of the study, researchers gave
participants two filler questionnaires to complete.

• In this experiment, these were the Marlowe-Crowne Social

Desirability Scale and a personality questionnaire.
Procedure: Session 2
• This took place after session 1. As with experiment 1, participants
were given false feedback about their responses.
• The critical item was in third position on their profile. It read
“you loved asparagus the first time you ate it”.

• The control group received no information about asparagus.

• Those in the love group completed an elaborate exercise. They

had to answer questions about their memory of this event. If
they appeared to struggle to report memory they were asked to
imagine what might of happened.
Procedure: Session 2
• They were asked what age they were when the event happened,
the location, what they were doing at the time and how the event
made them feel.

• Finally, all participants produced qualitative data to the question:

“what is the most important childhood, food related event in
your life that your food profile did not report?”
Procedure: Session 2
• Participants then looked at 20 slides showing common foods such
as spinach, strawberries, pizza and (the critical) asparagus. Each
slide was shown for 30 seconds and was rated on 4 criteria:

• How appetising participants found the food.

• How disgusting the participants found the food.
• Whether the photograph was taken by a novice, amateur or
professional photographer.
• Artistic quality of the picture.

1= not at all 8=very much

Procedure: Session 2
• All participants then completed the FPQ, RQ and FHI. They also
completed the M/B questionnaire as in experiment 1. They were
then debriefed.
Results:
• FHI. Both groups appeared to rate the critical asparagus item
similarly before any manipulation, but differently afterwards.

• Thirty participants were excluded from analyses (18 in the love

group and 12 in the control group) as they were reasonably sure that
they loved asparagus before any manipulation. This left 73
participants whose data were used.

• For the love group, the mean confidence increased by 2.5 points (1.7
to 4.2) but it increased by only 1.07 points for the control group
(1.45 to 2.52). This was a significant difference (p=0.006)
Results:
Memories of beliefs?

• Results were in the expected direction but just failed to reach

significance (p=0.07)

Condition Reported Reported Positive it was

“memory” “belief” not the case
Love 28% (n=11) 28% (n=11) 45% (n=18)

Control 6% (n=2) 38% (n=12) 56% (n=18)

Results:
• Those in the love group who had a memory were compared to those
who had a belief in terms of confidence about the critical event.

• The ratings for the critical asparagus event increased by 5.4 points in
the love group and 3.5 points for those with a belief. This was a
significant difference (p=0.02).

• Believers versus non-believers. The same definition of believer was

used here as in experiment 1. In the love group 21 participants were
labelled believers.
Results:
• The rating given by believers for confidence increased from a mean
of 1.95 (SD = 1.12) in session 1 to 6.48 (SD = 2.02) in session 2.
• For non-believers the increase was from 1.42 (SD = 0.90) to just 1.98
(SD = 0.07). Males and females were equally likely to have formed a
false memory.
Consequences of false beliefs:
• The two comparison groups were the same as experiment 1:
believers and controls. Neither group’s rating changed significantly
from session 1 to session 2 on the RQ. For the FPQ, believers
reported more desire to eat asparagus than the control group at
session 2 (p = 0.02)
Results:
• Mean ratings of critical items on post manipulation photographic
consequence measures in Experiment 2.

Appetising Disgusting Artistic quality

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
Believers 5.10 2.05 1.81 1.57 4.95 2.22
Non-believers 2.63 1.74 3.84 2.41 5.16 2.09
Controls 4.00 2.09 3.24 2.39 4.76 1.73
Results:
• The two comparison groups were the same as in experiment 1:
believers and controls.
• Neither group’s ratings changed significantly from session 1 to
session 2 on the RQ.
• For the FPQ, believers reported more desire to eat asparagus than
the control group at session 2 (p = 0.02)
• Believers rated slightly more food pictures as appetising than
participants in the control group (p = 0.06).
• Believers’ ratings for how disgusting they found the food pictures
were significantly lower than the control groups’ (p = 0.01)
Conclusion:
• Participants can be given positive false food beliefs that have
consequences. Those who believed the false feedback were more
likely to rate asparagus as being more appetising and less disgusting.

• Moreover, these false beliefs and memories are associated with

positive attitudinal and behavioral consequences, such as increased
self-reported preference for asparagus, willingness to spend more
for asparagus in the grocery store, and increased willingness to eat
asparagus in a restaurant.
Evaluation:

GRAVE
Evaluation:

GRAVE Generalisability

This study has low generalisability, the sample was large.

However, they were mostly university age and similar course
selection which could indicate similar types of people.
Evaluation:

GRAVE Reliability

This study’s reliability is very good as they used a standardised procedure

for testing the participants and the questionnaires were standardised.
Also, the study is obviously repeatable, as demonstrated in the second half
of the study.
Evaluation:

GRAVE Application

Lots of different applications here. This could be used with children

labelled as “fussy eaters” to improve their diet and overall health.
Potential for use to overcome some kinds of fears or phobias.
Evaluation:

GRAVE Validity

Internal validity is good in this study as they succeeded in inducing a

memory into an individual. Also, a repeated measures design was used to
help counterbalance any individual differences.
Low ecological validity due to the experiment being conducted in a lab
environment, which means that findings may not generalise to real-life
eating behaviours.
Evaluation:

GRAVE Ethics

Ethics are reasonably good. Participants were deceived about the aim of
this study. Informed consent could not be obtained as the participants did
not know the true aim and hence could not give full consent. However, it
was necessary and participants were debriefed.
Evaluation: Other considerations
Sample:
In terms of false memory production, the way that these students’
memory systems work may be qualitatively different from the way
memory systems work in other members of the population.

Data:
Quantitative data: the study collected a lot of quantitative data which
makes comparisons between the groups easier.

Statistical analyses were conducted to show significant differences

between the groups. The ratings regarding asparagus could easily be
compared.
 More resources for CIE A/S
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