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A world-renowned expert on human memory tells us we’re only fooling ourselves when we insist on saying “I KNOW what I saw.”
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. Her forty years of doing research on human memory has produced hundreds of papers in prestigious scientific journals and over 20 books. She’s provided expert testimony or consultation services in over 300 court cases, including dozens of high profile celebrities.
She shared with us much of what she’s learned about how recalling memories is not like pressing the <PLAY> button on a videorecorder in our head. Instead, those memories are fragile and easily contaminated by context-dependent details brought in later in time. Those changes can be produced by us ourselves, or by other people around us; it can be intentional (beneficially in therapy or research, or malevolently in gas-lighting and coerced confessions) or unintentional and just organic. It can happen days after the event, and is inevitable after years and decades. It’s not at all surprising that eyewitnesses in court cases can so frequently disagree in their testimonies.
Hmmmmmmm …… what might this say about biographies based on testimonies given decades after the events by highly motivated eyewitnesses? I’m sure you know what I’m referring to here!? Scott and I will come back to this question, after we hear from an expert neurobiologist or two.
Stay tuned!
As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …
Find out more about Dr. Elizabeth Loftus at her institutional profile page at UC Irvine.
If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy our previous discussion about the writing of the Gospel accounts, and a few others that immediately followed after that one.
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