Deconstructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime: Commentary on Shaw and Porter (2015)

Abstract

For 20 years, scientists have created a vast range of false autobiographical memories. Variations of the powerful "lost-in-the-mall" paradigm have led ordinary adults to appear to remember nonexistent childhood hospital visits, animal attacks, classroom pranks, and hot-air balloon rides (for a summary, see Newman & Garry, 2013). An analysis of published lost-in-the-mall studies suggests that, over time, the overall rate of false beliefs-but not false memories-generated in these studies has increased (see Fig. S1 in the Supplemental Material available online). Yet a recent demonstration was nonetheless surprising: When Shaw and Porter (2015) suggested to young adults that, as adolescents, they had committed a crime resulting in a brush with police, 70% constructed "rich false memories." As Shaw told PBS's NOVA on the "Memory Hackers" episode, the false memories "just kept coming and coming and coming" (Bicks & Strachan, 2016, 4 min, 13 s).Yet that 70% finding should give researchers pause, because it is markedly outside the central tendency of the lost-in-the-mall literature. In a recent mega-analysis comprising 423 memory reports, 22% of subjects were classified as having developed "full" or "robust" false memories (Scoboria et al., 2017). How, then, did Shaw and Porter create so many false memories? In this Commentary, we provide evidence that they did not.In lost-in-the-mall studies, two or more independent judges typically read transcripts of subjects' memory reports to determine whether subjects reject the suggestion outright, appear to believe the suggestion, or even seem to remember something about the false event. To date, 13 of 16 of these studies have distinguished between people who appear to develop false beliefs and those who appear to develop false memories. 1 Although different labs have defined and classified beliefs and memories differently, the gist of the distinction is this: People with false beliefs appear to accept that the false event occurred, or they imagine or speculate about it. People with false memories provide further evidence that they "genuinely" remember the event. For instance, they might elaborate on the suggested event, talk about emotions, or confidently state that they "remember the event occurring."Shaw and Porter said they did not distinguish between false beliefs and memories in their research. Nor did they use any one of several established coding schemes that distinguish between false beliefs and false memories, because they feared that these schemes might not meaningfully differentiate among their subjects' reports. Instead, they developed a new coding scheme that they described as "very conservative" (p. 295). At first glance, this new coding scheme does indeed look conservative: Subjects had to meet six criteria to be judged as reporting a false memory. For instance, subjects had to report details about the event in the final interview session, including "critical pieces of false information" (p. 295), and provide a basic account of how the event occurred. During debr...

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