We created a quick fictional interview for you that talks a great deal about some themes we plan to address in our Podcast. Enjoy!
Description:
Elizabeth Loftus is an American cognitive psychologist from Stanford University. She researches on false memory, and how people remember things differently.
Loftus started her career as a researcher at New School, where she has published various studies on misinformation psychology.
Interview:
Q: Why did you choose to study human memories rather than other branches in psychology?
A: So when I was 14 years old, my uncle told me I was the one to find my mother’s body after a drowning accident. But as it turned out, my uncle was mistaken because it was my aunt who found her body floating in the pool. This traumatic event really got me thinking about how suggestibility often gets in the way of knowing our own truth; and how vital the facts really are.
Q: In particular, you research “false memories.” What interested you about false memories?
A: I found it so compelling how we had no way of explaining why people recall incidents which either did not occur, or occurred in a completely different way. Before I published my first study in 1974, no one had researched this issue.
Q: Today, false memories are being tied to an Internet phenomenon called the Mandela Effect. Is this a fair connection, or are they two completely different concepts?
A: There’s a correlation between the two, but the Mandela Effect, in my opinion, is a way for people to merely laugh at themselves, and realize minuscule details that originally went under their noses. False memories on the other hand, have real life consequences as I unfortunately know very well. For instance, did you know false memories is the leading cause of wrongful criminal convictions? It just blows my mind how schools, courtrooms and more rely so heavily on memories which are proven to morph and bend the truth.
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