Retroactive exposure to misleading content fabricates detailed memories of impossible events

Evidence

Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine, is a controversial figure in the field, mostly because of her testimonies on the (questionable) reliability of human memory. She has consulted on hundreds of legal defence cases, including the Ted Bundy and Harvey Weinstein trials. But controversial or not, Loftus is the world’s expert on ‘the misinformation effect’: the robust finding that exposure to misleading information after people experience an event can significantly alter our memories of what really happened. In one of her well-known studies, ‘the Bugs Bunny study’, she exposed people to a fake Disneyland pamphlet entitled, ‘It’s time to remember the magic.’ The point was to activate childhood memories of a visit to Disneyland. However, there was something odd about the pamphlet: it featured a message from Bugs Bunny – a Warner Brothers cartoon character that couldn’t possibly have been present at Disneyland. After exposure to the ad, about 25 to 35 per cent of participants claimed to have met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. People offered up specific details too; about 60 per cent of those who claimed to have met Bugs remembered they hugged him, and one individual even recalled Bugs holding a carrot. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 81

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my broader interest in memory reliability and to work on the misinformation effect that overlaps with themes in other books I’ve curated on persuasion and social influence. — connects to: Conspiracy theorists used hypnosis to legitimize revisions as recovered memory — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 462; Awareness of a correction does not stop misinformation from infecting related memories; People can remember places vividly while forgetting the events that occurred in them — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1085 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the Bugs Bunny study’s 25-35% false-memory rate replicate under pre-registered protocols, or has it faced replication scrutiny?

Broader Connections

• Self-reported fake news exposure is mostly false memory rather than real contact #exemplifies (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 518
• Awareness of a correction does not stop misinformation from infecting related memories #corroborates (0.82)
• Misinformation leaves residual traces in memory even after correction #corroborates (0.80) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 241
• People can remember places vividly while forgetting the events that occurred in them #expands (0.75) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1085
• People preferentially form false memories consistent with their political allegiances #expands (0.72) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 82