{"id":30905,"date":"2016-12-08T00:57:01","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T00:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/half-of-people-believe-fake-facts-remember-events\/"},"modified":"2016-12-08T00:56:37","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T00:56:37","slug":"half-of-people-believe-fake-facts-remember-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/half-of-people-believe-fake-facts-remember-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Half of people believe fake facts, ‘remember’ events that never happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Many people are prone to ‘remembering’ events that never happened, according to new research by the University of Warwick.}<\/p>\n

In a study on false memories, Dr Kimberley Wade in the Department of Psychology demonstrates that if we are told about a completely fictitious event from our lives, and repeatedly imagine that event occurring, almost half of us would accept that it did.<\/p>\n

Over 400 participants in ‘memory implantation’ studies had fictitious autobiographical events suggested to them — and it was found that around 50% of the participants believed, to some degree, that they had experienced those events.<\/p>\n

Participants in these studies came to remember a range of false events, such as taking a childhood hot air balloon ride, playing a prank on a teacher, or creating havoc at a family wedding.<\/p>\n

30% of participants appeared to ‘remember’ the event — they accepted the suggested event, elaborated on how the event occurred, and even described images of what the event was like. Another 23% showed signs that they accepted the suggested event to some degree and believed it really happened.<\/p>\n

Dr Wade and colleagues conclude that it can be very difficult to determine when a person is recollecting actual past events, as opposed to false memories — even in a controlled research environment; and more so in real life situations.<\/p>\n

These findings have significance in many areas — raising questions around the authenticity of memories used in forensic investigations, court rooms, and therapy treatments.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the collective memories of a large group of people or society could be incorrect — due to misinformation in the news, for example — having a striking effect on people’s perceptions and behaviour.<\/p>\n

Dr Wade comments on the importance of this study: “We know that many factors affect the creation of false beliefs and memories — such as asking a person to repeatedly imagine a fake event or to view photos to “jog” their memory. But we don’t fully understand how all these factors interact. Large-scale studies like our mega-analysis move us a little bit closer.<\/p>\n

“The finding that a large portion of people are prone to developing false beliefs is important. We know from other research that distorted beliefs can influence people’s behaviours, intentions and attitudes.”<\/p>\n

Scientists have been using variations of this procedure for 20 years to study how people can come to remember wholly false experiences.<\/p>\n

\"Over<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Many people are prone to ‘remembering’ events that never happened, according to new research by the University of Warwick.} In a study on false memories, Dr Kimberley Wade in the Department of Psychology demonstrates that if we are told about a completely fictitious event from our lives, and repeatedly imagine that event occurring, almost half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[75],"byline":[2491],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-news","tag-homenews","byline-science-daily"],"bylines":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30905"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30905"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}