Blog Post #1- False Memories

    I’ve always been skeptical of hypnotism and learning that a lot of it has to do with the person guiding the hypnotism asking leading questions and being suggestive made sense. The power of suggestion can lead you to believe in things that aren’t real, whether its ghosts or your own memories. I liked how Loftus brought up how promoting things like hypnotism to recover “memories” can be dangerous and harmful. It makes people live through trauma such as abuse they may have never actually experienced and it can destroy families, like in one case she talks about. The claim was that a mother abused a daughter, and Loftus believes it never happened. False memories have even gone as far as getting someone wrongly convicted due to a victim remembering wrong. Learning that memory isn’t like a video camera where it captures the moment exactly how it happened, but that its influenced by expectations and what is happening in current time was very interesting. Two people could be certain they are right, and in their memory they are, but that doesn’t mean that’s how the events actually happened. There is also the lack of connection between the confidence that their story is accurate and the actual accuracy of the event. It doesn’t matter how sure someone is and how clearly they can remember it, since research shows there is little correlation between the two.