Planting misinformation in the human mind: a 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory.

By Elizabeth F. Loftus. Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 2005

1,309 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The misinformation effect refers to the impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to misleading information. The phenomenon has been investigated for at least 30 years, as investigators have addressed a number of issues. These include the conditions under which people are especially susceptible to the negative impact of misinformation, and conversely when are they resistant. Warnings about the potential for misinformation sometimes work to inhibit its damaging effects, but only under limited circumstances. The misinformation effect has been observed in a variety of human and nonhuman species. And some groups of individuals are more susceptible than others. At a more theoretical level, investigators have explored the fate of the original memory traces after exposure to misinformation appears to have made them inaccessible. This review of the field ends with a brief discussion of the newer work involving misinformation that has explored the processes by which people come to believe falsely that they experienced rich complex events that never, in fact, occurred.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc776ddcc62c0992e2ef4893e0dfb7c9b918148c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Is This Testimony Truthful, Fabricated, or Based on False Memory? (2014, background): “…that repeated suggestive interviews performed with an expectation bias as well as explicit searches for until then nonretrievable memories can lead to subjective beliefs and, at times, to vivid mental percepts – that is, to false memories that have objectively not occurred (e.g., Loftus, 2005).”
The Eyewitness Post Identification Feedback Effect 15 Years Later: Theoretical and Policy Implications (2014, background): “Yet, recall is an ongoing constructive process that is guided by a person’s state of knowledge at the time of retrieval (Loftus, 2005; Ross, 1990).”
Current Issues and Advances in Misinformation Research (2011, background): “details of witnessed events (see Loftus, 2005, for a review of the misinformation effect). In a typical misinformation experiment, research subjects are shown materials (e.g., photographs) and are then exposed to deliberately misleading information about what they saw. In a final testing phase, many”
How to protect eyewitness memory against the misinformation effect: A meta-analysis of post-warning studies (2014, background): “…Lindsay, 1990; Zaragoza & Lane, 1994).1 The overwhelming majority of literally hundreds of studies of the eyewitness misinformation effect confirm its existence (in one or both of the forms described above; see Belli & Loftus, 1996; Loftus, 2005; Zaragoza, Belli & Payment, 2006; for overviews).”
Reconsolidation of episodic memories: a subtle reminder triggers integration of new information. (2007, background): “Although many have suggested that memory storage is dynamic (e.g., Tulving 1984; Loftus 2005), until recently reactivation as a prerequisite for memory change was not considered.”
INVITED REVIEW The fallibility of memory in judicial processes: Lessons from the past and their modern consequences (2015, background): “We can distort original memories by exposing people to misleading information (for a review, see Loftus, 2005).”
Neural reactivation in parietal cortex enhances memory for episodically linked information (2018, background): “For instance, during retrieval, memories can be updated with additional information (1), modified with detail lost (2), altered by misinformation (3), or strengthened for superior long-term retention.”
He did it! She did it! No, she did not! Multiple causal explanations and the continued influence of misinformation (2015, background): “Likewise, time-based theories of memory argue that more recently encoded information is more strongly activated in memory, and may thus block access to the earlier-encoded original memory trace (cf. Ayers & Reder, 1998; Loftus, 2005).”
The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing: A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia, Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law (2007, background): “The subsequent suppression of the induction of new plasticity from being generated in phase 2 would reduce, but perhaps not completely block, the corruption of the memory of phase 1 events by later occurring events (Laney and Loftus [93]; Loftus [303]).”
Eyewitness Memory for People and Events (2003, background): “When asked whether they originally saw a stop or a yield sign, those given the phony information tended to adopt it as their memory; they said they saw a yield sign (see Loftus, 2005 for a review of this study and similar research).”
Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news (2019, background): “, misinformation triggered by false memory effects in legal settings) (3).”
Protecting Against Misleading Post‐event Information with a Self‐Administered Interview (2012, background): “Loftus, E. F., Levidow, B., & Duensing, S. (1992). Who remembers best? Indi-”
How to unring the bell: A meta-analytic approach to correction of misinformation (2018, result): “With respect to the selection criteria, the analysis did not differentiate between studies from the continued influence paradigm (for a summary see Lewandowsky et al., 2012) and studies associated with post-event misinformation (for a summary see Loftus, 2005).”
When Eyewitnesses Talk (2009, background): “Loftus (2005) showed that people will report information suggested after an event because they have developed a false memory for it.”