Creating Non-Believed Memories for Recent Autobiographical Events

Abstract

A recent study showed that many people spontaneously report vivid memories of events that they do not believe to have occurred [1]. In the present experiment we tested for the first time whether, after powerful false memories have been created, debriefing might leave behind nonbelieved memories for the fake events. In Session 1 participants imitated simple actions, and in Session 2 they saw doctored video-recordings containing clips that falsely suggested they had performed additional (fake) actions. As in earlier studies, this procedure created powerful false memories. In Session 3, participants were debriefed and told that specific actions in the video were not truly performed. Beliefs and memories for all critical actions were tested before and after the debriefing. Results showed that debriefing undermined participants' beliefs in fake actions, but left behind residual memory-like content. These results indicate that debriefing can leave behind vivid false memories which are no longer believed, and thus we demonstrate for the first time that the memory of an event can be experimentally dissociated from the belief in the event's occurrence. These results also confirm that belief in and memory for an event can be independently-occurring constructs.

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

“…In sum, whereas Clark et al (2012) and Otgaar et al (2013) demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between remembering and believing when studying autobiographical memory (Mazzoni & Kirsch, 2002), the final demonstration of the independence between the belief in the occurrence of an event and the memory for that same event requires showing that it is possible to substantially decrease individuals' belief in the occurrence of vividly remembered events that genuinely occurred. The present study aimed at producing such a demonstration by providing participants with negative misinformation RUNNING HEAD: NON-BELIEVED TRUE MEMORIES 8 about the occurrence of true events; that is, by falsely claiming that those events never occurred.…”

“…Although the Clark et al (2012) and Otgaar et al (2013) studies provide compelling demonstrations that experimentally created beliefs in false events can be easily undermined, they do not show that beliefs can be dissociated from true memories. Indeed, findings from many domains of psychology show subtle ways in which true and false memories can differ.…”

“…The first is an autobiographical memory; the second is an autobiographical belief (Mazzoni & Kirsch, 2002). Although these two constructs are often conflated in memory research, recent studies have shown that they can vary independently (Clark, Nash, Fincham, & Mazzoni, 2012;Mazzoni, Scoboria, & Harvey, 2010;Otgaar, Scoboria, & Smeets, 2013;Scoboria, Jackson, Talarico, Hanczakowski, Wysman, & Mazzoni, in press;Scoboria, Mazzoni, Kirsch, & Relyea, 2004).…”

“…Whereas Mazzoni et al (2010) studied naturally-occurring non-believed memories, a recent false-memory study provided the first empirical demonstration of the creation of nonbelieved memories for recent events in the laboratory (Clark et al, 2012). After developing very vivid false memories for performing particular actions, participants in that study were debriefed and told that their false memories were indeed false; that is, that the participants had never performed those actions.…”

On the persuadability of memory: Is changing people's memories no more than changing their minds?

“…The second form of evidence comes from recent studies of non-believed memories. In those studies, researchers were able to use persuasive techniques to undermine participants' beliefs in the truthvalue of their memories, without fully undermining the memories themselves (Clark, Nash, Fincham, & Mazzoni, 2012;Mazzoni et al, in press;Otgaar, Scoboria, & Smeets, 2013). These authors showed that the persuasive techniques left behind 'nonbelieved' memory content that shared many of the same subjective and experiential characteristics as believed memories.…”