Empathizing with others’ stories can implant false autobiographical memories.

Evidence

My (Ulrike Schiesser’s) sister Klara tells the story of being involved in a car accident when she was 16. The car skids on a curve in heavy snowfall, slides off the roadway and comes to a stop, with the front wheels already partially over a slope. The driver and front passenger get out immediately to reduce the weight in front, and the three backseat passengers remain seated to prevent the car from tipping forward while help is summoned. My sister sits in the back seat and describes the following 10 min as extremely stressful and anxiety-provoking. An impressive experience, an exciting story that she still tells years later. Until a friend interrupts her in astonishment: “Klara, you weren’t even there!” My sister is irritated and perplexed. She remembers the situation so well, the fear and the relief when a tractor finally secured the vehicle. She is completely sure that she experienced it herself. But she didn’t, as it turns out. She empathized with the stories told by the victims at the time, put herself in their shoes, and after a few years this empathic experience was mixed with real memories and stored as a biographical element. Without her being aware of it, a false memory has crept in. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 146

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the fear-of-untrue-narratives theme from the conspiracy section and to vivid-forgetting material in earlier reading. — connects to: People preferentially form false memories consistent with their political allegiances — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 82
• FICTION: The unwitting false memory is a strong engine for a narrative about unreliable personal testimony.