What's the Matter with Memory a video from fora.tv website is a presentation on the human memory. It is lecture by Professor Elizabeth Loftus, a Psychologist of memory, with many published books and awards for her studies.
Dr. Loftus explains the studies and work that they have been doing. They discovered that it was very easy to plant memories into the mind. Her research ultimately was to show how often false memories are created.
A study was conducted with real people and a central false memory. Being lost in a mall when one was younger, spilling juice on people as a child at a wedding, and so forth. The approach was to get real memories from parents and bring those memories up, after the subjects verified recollection of the parents stories, they would place one of the false stories claiming that the parents had divulged the memory. Out of all case studies 1/4 of all the subjects created in full or in part the false memory.
The other point brought up was that therapeutic psychologist would convince clients that because of certain habits and feeling as a child they were raped. Obviously the client would deny it and then the therapist would have them imagine the event, in an effort to bring it back to memory, and this ultimately would created a false memory.
I have to ask my self, when we communicate how often do we share experiences that are warped because of false memories? For example Hillary Clinton when running for president in 2008 related a memory about flying to the middle east in 1996, having a crazy landing, under sniper shot, no welcome party, and having to run ducking their heads into the nearest building. Photos of the event show Hillary with her daughter getting of the plane with a welcome party, and there was no crazy landing, snipers, or running. She later said that she made a mistake.
We often take others memories as a logical and true story. In communicating memories, let us be careful to not make the fish 10 times bigger than it really is.
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