False Memories Under Fire
By University College London
The 1995 “Lost in the Mall” study has been widely referenced
in criminal trials, especially in cases of historical sexual abuse — most
notably by Harvey Weinstein’s defense team — to question the reliability of
accusers’ memories.
This well-known study suggested that implanting false
memories of events that never happened is relatively easy. In the original
study, 25% of the 24 participants falsely remembered being lost in a
supermarket at the age of five.
In 2023, psychologists from University College Cork and
University College Dublin replicated the study using the same methods but with
a larger sample of 123 participants. They reported a higher rate of false
memories, claiming that 35% of participants recalled the fabricated event.
Scrutiny of Recent Findings
However, a new analysis of the 2023 data, published in Applied
Cognitive Psychology, has cast significant doubt on these findings. It
revealed that none of the 35% classified as having a false memory fully
recalled the fabricated event, and many did not even remember being lost at
all.
According to the new analysis, half of those judged to have
false memories had actually been lost before and were likely to be reporting on
real events (albeit at a different time/place). Meanwhile, others were so
unsure about the suggested details in the fake story that their testimony would
have been of little value in court.
Implications for Legal Proceedings
Emeritus Professor Chris Brewin (UCL Psychology &
Language Sciences) said: “The findings underscore the dangers of applying
laboratory research findings to the real world of witnesses in court. People in
these studies are cautious in what they claim to remember and seem to be much
less likely than the investigators to agree they had a false memory. Experts
need to be very careful in how they present research findings so as not to
mislead the justice system.”
As part of their analysis, the researchers focused on six
core details of the fake event, including: being lost; crying; being helped by
an elderly woman; being reunited with their family; the location of the event;
the time of the event.
Participant Reliability and Memory
They found that participants who were deemed to have a false
memory on average recalled one and a half details with any confidence, and 30%
recalled none at all.
This was consistent with previous reports that
investigators’ false memory judgments were often not backed up by the views of
the participants themselves.
Lead author Emeritus Professor Bernice Andrews (Royal
Holloway Department of Psychology) added: “This is the first time that the raw
data from a false memory implantation study have been made publicly available
and subjected to independent scrutiny.”
Reference: “Lost in the Mall? Interrogating Judgements of
False Memory” by Bernice Andrews and Chris R. Brewin, 12 December 2024, Applied
Cognitive Psychology.
DOI:
10.1002/acp.70012
