Changing beliefs and memories through dream interpretation

Abstract

Autobiographical memory is malleable, but how much can we change people's beliefs and memories about the past? We approached this question with a method designed to supply subjects with a highly personalized suggestion about what probably happened in their childhood. In the current study, one group of subjects (the ‘Dream’ subjects) had their dreams interpreted to indicate that they had experienced a critical childhood event (e.g. being harassed by a bully) before the age of 3. Relative to control subjects who did not receive personalized suggestion, the Dream subjects were more likely to increase their belief that they had the critical experience, and approximately half of these also produced concrete memory reports. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for autobiographical memory, and also for psychotherapy practice. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Imagination inflation: A statistical artifact of regression toward the mean

“…In another study of imagination inflation, Mazzoni, Loftus, Seitz, and Lynn (1999) used a variation of the procedure of Garry et al (1996). Likelihood ratings for events on the LEI were provided in the first LEI session and 3 or 4 weeks later in the second LEI session.…”

“…Control subjects did not have the dream interpretation session. Mazzoni et al (1999) reported that in the dream interpretation condition, likelihood ratings for the critical target item were more likely to increase than to decrease from Time 1 to Time 2. In the control condition, however, likelihood ratings for the target item were more likely to decrease than to increase from Time 1 to Time 2.…”

Disowned recollections: Denying true experiences undermines belief in occurrence but not judgments of remembering

“…The function of the first component (the belief component) is to provide ongoing adjustment to major and minor changes in situation, RUNNING HEAD: NON-BELIEVED TRUE MEMORIES 25 context and information, which might be important for quickly updating self-referring information. This interpretation is compatible with Conway's notion of coherence and might explain some rather surprising results showing that memory-related beliefs can be manipulated with extreme ease (e.g., Bernstein, Whittlesea, & Loftus, 2002;Mazzoni, Loftus, Seitz, & Lynn, 1999). Here we have shown that with similar ease beliefs can be decreased when people are provided with negative misinformation, while endorsements of remembering remain unaltered.…”

Did you witness demonic possession? A response time analysis of the relationship between event plausibility and autobiographical beliefs

“…Did you go for a hot air balloon ride when you were 6 or younger? These are some of the questions asked in studies on the creation of false autobiographical beliefs and memories (e.g., Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996;Loftus & Pickrell, 1995;Mazzoni, Loftus, Seitz, & Lynn, 1999;Mazzoni & Memon, 2003;Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002). These studies have shown that a variety of procedures (e.g., imagination, relatives' reports, dream interpretation, and doctored photographs) produce reliable increases in confidence about the occurrence of specific target autobiographical events, although in most cases the events had not in fact happened.…”