Is the public understanding of memory prone to widespread “myths”?

Abstract

It is frequently asserted that the understanding of memory among the general public and among legal and psychological professionals is deficient, the most prominent examples being that many people appear to liken memory to a video camera, overestimate the association between accuracy and confidence, and believe in repression. The existing evidence is limited to single questionnaire items, however, and to date there has been little investigation of context effects or of the public's underlying assumptions about memory. In the first study we found that people endorse the video camera metaphor as well as several other prominent memory metaphors, but that they were more likely to agree that memory is not like a video camera when the assumptions were made explicit and alternative responses were provided. In the second study we replicated this finding and found a context effect whereby alternatives reduced endorsement of the video camera metaphor. For the first time we identified frequent reports of naturallyoccurring imagery involving moving scenes, and showed that drawing attention to imagery increased agreement with the video camera metaphor. In a third study we found that nonpsychologists' beliefs about accuracy-confidence, while reflecting considerable uncertainty, were more consistent with the current evidence than those of psychologists, and that they tended to use the term 'repression' in a way consistent with scientific evidence. Overall, lay views of memory were considerably more nuanced and in line with research than has been suggested, contradicting claims of widespread memory "myths".

Belief in unconscious repressed memory is widespread: A comment on Brewin, Li, Ntarantana, Unsworth, and McNeilis (2019).

“…We agree that work using the Think/No Think or directed forgetting paradigm can be construed as evidence that deliberate blocking of memories can sometimes make a memory harder to retrieve. However, we disagree with Brewin et al (2019) that their survey statement on this issue is related to paradigms such as Think/No Think or directed forgetting paradigm. The statement that Brewin et al used ("Traumatic experiences can be deliberately blocked for many years and then recovered") focused on the assertion that traumatic experiences can be consciously suppressed for many years.…”

“…Participants were compensated with $0.25. In Study 3 of Brewin et al (2019), 80 university students were tested.…”

Fool me twice: how effective is debriefing in false memory studies?

“…This average estimate was significantly higher than the rate of false memory we observed in the current study, as well as that observed in most false memory studies (Loftus, 2005). Given the ongoing debate concerning public perceptions of memory reliability and whether nonpsychologists perceive memory to work 'like a video camera' (Brewin et al, 2019;Otgaar et al, 2020;Simons & Chabris, 2011), this high estimate is noteworthy.…”

“…Furthermore, we assessed whether previous participation in our false memory study may have been educational; specifically, we evaluated whether participants estimated false memories to be more or less common if they had previously taken part in a false memory study and been debriefed. There is debate as to how widespread memory myths are amongst the general public (Brewin et al, 2019;Otgaar et al, 2020;Simons & Chabris, 2011) and it is unclear if participation in a false memory study impacts these opinions.…”

Sensitizing jurors to eyewitness evidence using a counterfactual mindset induction

“…Lay understanding of many aspects of eyewitness memory has improved over time (Desmarais & Read, 2011), with an increasing proportion of respondents reporting beliefs in line with eyewitness experts regarding factors such as pre‐lineup instructions, cross‐race identifications, and post‐event information (see also Simons & Chabris, 2011). Recent evidence further indicates that lay beliefs in “memory myths” may be artifacts of survey construction, and actual lay beliefs about memory may be more in line with science than previously thought (Brewin, Li, Ntarantana, Unsworth, & McNeilis, 2019). This suggests that jurors have (at least some of) the requisite knowledge of eyewitness factors to accurately evaluate eyewitness evidence; the issue is devising a way to encourage jurors to apply that knowledge to the case at hand.…”