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memory
Your memory is not a recording, it is a draft.
A 1974 study found that asking how fast cars were moving when they smashed led to higher speed estimates than asking how fast they were when they hit.
Incorporating misleading information into a question can permanently alter your original memory of an event. Your brain integrates the new data, making it impossible to distinguish between what you saw and what you were told. Over time, the memory is rewritten.
You cannot trust the accuracy of your own history.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Elizabeth Loftus, 1974
- What the check found
- The claim accurately reflects the seminal findings of the 1974 study (Loftus and Palmer, 'Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction').
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.