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How reliable is your memory? | Elizabeth Loftus — Transcript

by TED · 2,411 words · 347 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:12I'd like to tell you about a legal case that I worked on
0:16involving a man named Steve Titus.
0:20Titus was a restaurant manager.
0:23He was 31 years old, he lived in Seattle, Washington,
0:27he was engaged to Gretchen,
0:29about to be married, she was the love of his life.
0:32And one night, the couple went out
0:34for a romantic restaurant meal.
0:37They were on their way home,
0:39and they were pulled over by a police officer.
0:42You see, Titus' car sort of resembled
0:45a car that was driven earlier in the evening
0:49by a man who raped a female hitchhiker,
0:52and Titus kind of resembled that rapist.
0:56So the police took a picture of Titus,
0:59they put it in a photo lineup,
1:01they later showed it to the victim,
1:03and she pointed to Titus' photo.
1:06She said, "That one's the closest."
1:09The police and the prosecution proceeded with a trial,
1:13and when Steve Titus was put on trial for rape,
1:16the rape victim got on the stand
1:19and said, "I'm absolutely positive that's the man."
1:23And Titus was convicted.
1:26He proclaimed his innocence,
1:28his family screamed at the jury,
1:30his fiancée collapsed on the floor sobbing,
1:33and Titus is taken away to jail.
1:37So what would you do at this point?
1:40What would you do?
1:42Well, Titus lost complete faith in the legal system,
1:46and yet he got an idea.
1:48He called up the local newspaper,
1:50he got the interest of an investigative journalist,
1:53and that journalist actually found the real rapist,
1:58a man who ultimately confessed to this rape,
2:01a man who was thought to have committed 50 rapes
2:05in that area,
2:06and when this information was given to the judge,
2:09the judge set Titus free.
2:12And really, that's where this case should have ended.
2:16It should have been over.
2:17Titus should have thought of this as a horrible year,
2:20a year of accusation and trial, but over.
2:24It didn't end that way.
2:26Titus was so bitter.
2:28He'd lost his job. He couldn't get it back.
2:31He lost his fiancée.
2:33She couldn't put up with his persistent anger.
2:36He lost his entire savings,
2:38and so he decided to file a lawsuit
2:41against the police and others whom he felt
2:43were responsible for his suffering.
2:45And that's when I really started working on this case,
2:50trying to figure out
2:52how did that victim go from
2:54"That one's the closest"
2:56to "I'm absolutely positive that's the guy."
3:00Well, Titus was consumed with his civil case.
3:04He spent every waking moment thinking about it,
3:07and just days before he was to have his day in court,
3:11he woke up in the morning,
3:13doubled over in pain,
3:15and died of a stress-related heart attack.
3:18He was 35 years old.
3:21So I was asked to work on Titus' case
3:26because I'm a psychological scientist.
3:28I study memory. I've studied memory for decades.
3:32And if I meet somebody on an airplane --
3:35this happened on the way over to Scotland --
3:37if I meet somebody on an airplane,
3:39and we ask each other, "What do you do? What do you do?"
3:42and I say "I study memory,"
3:44they usually want to tell me how they have trouble remembering names,
3:47or they've got a relative who's got Alzheimer's
3:50or some kind of memory problem,
3:52but I have to tell them
3:54I don't study when people forget.
3:58I study the opposite: when they remember,
4:01when they remember things that didn't happen
4:03or remember things that were different
4:05from the way they really were.
4:07I study false memories.
4:12Unhappily, Steve Titus is not the only person
4:16to be convicted based on somebody's false memory.
4:21In one project in the United States,
4:24information has been gathered
4:26on 300 innocent people,
4:30300 defendants who were convicted of crimes they didn't do.
4:34They spent 10, 20, 30 years in prison for these crimes,
4:39and now DNA testing has proven
4:42that they are actually innocent.
4:45And when those cases have been analyzed,
4:47three quarters of them
4:49are due to faulty memory, faulty eyewitness memory.
4:55Well, why?
4:56Like the jurors who convicted those innocent people
5:00and the jurors who convicted Titus,
5:02many people believe that memory
5:04works like a recording device.
5:06You just record the information,
5:08then you call it up and play it back
5:11when you want to answer questions or identify images.
5:14But decades of work in psychology
5:16has shown that this just isn't true.
5:20Our memories are constructive.
5:22They're reconstructive.
5:24Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page:
5:27You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.
5:32I first started studying this constructive memory process
5:37in the 1970s.
5:40I did my experiments that involved showing people
5:44simulated crimes and accidents
5:47and asking them questions about what they remember.
5:50In one study, we showed people a simulated accident
5:54and we asked people,
5:56how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?
5:58And we asked other people,
6:00how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?
6:04And if we asked the leading "smashed" question,
6:07the witnesses told us the cars were going faster,
6:10and moreover, that leading "smashed" question
6:14caused people to be more likely to tell us
6:17that they saw broken glass in the accident scene
6:20when there wasn't any broken glass at all.
6:24In another study, we showed a simulated accident
6:27where a car went through an intersection with a stop sign,
6:30and if we asked a question that insinuated it was a yield sign,
6:35many witnesses told us they remember seeing a yield sign
6:39at the intersection, not a stop sign.
6:43And you might be thinking, well, you know,
6:45these are filmed events,
6:46they are not particularly stressful.
6:48Would the same kind of mistakes be made
6:51with a really stressful event?
6:54In a study we published just a few months ago,
6:57we have an answer to this question,
6:59because what was unusual about this study
7:02is we arranged for people to have a very stressful experience.
7:07The subjects in this study
7:10were members of the U.S. military
7:12who were undergoing a harrowing training exercise
7:17to teach them what it's going to be like for them
7:19if they are ever captured as prisoners of war.
7:23And as part of this training exercise,
7:26these soldiers are interrogated in an aggressive,
7:29hostile, physically abusive fashion for 30 minutes
7:34and later on they have to try to identify
7:37the person who conducted that interrogation.
7:40And when we feed them suggestive information
7:44that insinuates it's a different person,
7:47many of them misidentify their interrogator,
7:51often identifying someone who doesn't even remotely
7:55resemble the real interrogator.
7:58And so what these studies are showing
8:00is that when you feed people misinformation
8:04about some experience that they may have had,
8:07you can distort or contaminate or change their memory.
8:13Well out there in the real world,
8:15misinformation is everywhere.
8:18We get misinformation
8:19not only if we're questioned in a leading way,
8:22but if we talk to other witnesses
8:25who might consciously or inadvertently feed us
8:28some erroneous information,
8:30or if we see media coverage about some event we might have experienced,
8:35all of these provide the opportunity
8:37for this kind of contamination of our memory.
8:42In the 1990s, we began to see
8:46an even more extreme kind of memory problem.
8:50Some patients were going into therapy with one problem --
8:53maybe they had depression, an eating disorder --
8:56and they were coming out of therapy
8:59with a different problem.
9:02Extreme memories for horrific brutalizations,
9:05sometimes in satanic rituals,
9:07sometimes involving really bizarre and unusual elements.
9:12One woman came out of psychotherapy
9:15believing that she'd endured years
9:17of ritualistic abuse, where she was forced into a pregnancy
9:21and that the baby was cut from her belly.
9:24But there were no physical scars
9:26or any kind of physical evidence
9:28that could have supported her story.
9:31And when I began looking into these cases,
9:34I was wondering,
9:35where do these bizarre memories come from?
9:38And what I found is that most of these situations
9:42involved some particular form of psychotherapy.
9:47And so I asked,
9:49were some of the things going on in this psychotherapy --
9:52like the imagination exercises
9:55or dream interpretation,
9:57or in some cases hypnosis,
10:00or in some cases exposure to false information --
10:03were these leading these patients
10:06to develop these very bizarre,
10:09unlikely memories?
10:12And I designed some experiments
10:14to try to study the processes that were being used
10:19in this psychotherapy so I could study
10:22the development of these very rich false memories.
10:26In one of the first studies we did,
10:28we used suggestion,
10:30a method inspired by the psychotherapy we saw in these cases,
10:34we used this kind of suggestion
10:36and planted a false memory
10:38that when you were a kid, five or six years old,
10:41you were lost in a shopping mall.
10:44You were frightened. You were crying.
10:46You were ultimately rescued by an elderly person
10:49and reunited with the family.
10:51And we succeeded in planting this memory
10:53in the minds of about a quarter of our subjects.
10:57And you might be thinking, well,
10:59that's not particularly stressful.
11:02But we and other investigators have planted
11:05rich false memories of things that were
11:08much more unusual and much more stressful.
11:11So in a study done in Tennessee,
11:13researchers planted the false memory
11:16that when you were a kid, you nearly drowned
11:18and had to be rescued by a life guard.
11:21And in a study done in Canada,
11:23researchers planted the false memory
11:26that when you were a kid,
11:27something as awful as being attacked by a vicious animal
11:30happened to you,
11:32succeeding with about half of their subjects.
11:35And in a study done in Italy,
11:38researchers planted the false memory,
11:40when you were a kid, you witnessed demonic possession.
11:45I do want to add that it might seem
11:48like we are traumatizing these experimental subjects
11:51in the name of science,
11:53but our studies have gone through thorough evaluation
11:58by research ethics boards
12:00that have made the decision
12:02that the temporary discomfort that some
12:05of these subjects might experience in these studies
12:08is outweighed by the importance of this problem
12:12for understanding memory processes
12:15and the abuse of memory that is going on
12:18in some places in the world.
12:22Well, to my surprise,
12:25when I published this work and began to speak out
12:28against this particular brand of psychotherapy,
12:32it created some pretty bad problems for me:
12:36hostilities, primarily from the repressed memory therapists,
12:41who felt under attack,
12:43and by the patients whom they had influenced.
12:46I had sometimes armed guards at speeches
12:49that I was invited to give,
12:51people trying to drum up letter-writing campaigns to get me fired.
12:55But probably the worst
12:57was I suspected that a woman
13:00was innocent of abuse
13:02that was being claimed by her grown daughter.
13:05She accused her mother of sexual abuse
13:09based on a repressed memory.
13:11And this accusing daughter had actually allowed her story
13:13to be filmed and presented in public places.
13:17I was suspicious of this story,
13:19and so I started to investigate,
13:22and eventually found information that convinced me
13:26that this mother was innocent.
13:28I published an exposé on the case,
13:31and a little while later, the accusing daughter
13:35filed a lawsuit.
13:36Even though I'd never mentioned her name,
13:39she sued me for defamation and invasion of privacy.
13:43And I went through nearly five years
13:46of dealing with this messy, unpleasant litigation,
13:52but finally, finally, it was over and I could really
13:56get back to my work.
13:58In the process, however, I became part
14:01of a disturbing trend in America
14:04where scientists are being sued
14:06for simply speaking out on matters of great public controversy.
14:10When I got back to my work, I asked this question:
14:14if I plant a false memory in your mind,
14:16does it have repercussions?
14:18Does it affect your later thoughts,
14:20your later behaviors?
14:22Our first study planted a false memory
14:24that you got sick as a child eating certain foods:
14:27hard-boiled eggs, dill pickles, strawberry ice cream.
14:30And we found that once we planted this false memory,
14:34people didn't want to eat the foods as much
14:36at an outdoor picnic.
14:38The false memories aren't necessarily bad or unpleasant.
14:42If we planted a warm, fuzzy memory
14:44involving a healthy food like asparagus,
14:48we could get people to want to eat asparagus more.
14:51And so what these studies are showing
14:53is that you can plant false memories
14:55and they have repercussions
14:57that affect behavior long after the memories take hold.
15:02Well, along with this ability
15:04to plant memories and control behavior
15:07obviously come some important ethical issues,
15:11like, when should we use this mind technology?
15:15And should we ever ban its use?
15:18Therapists can't ethically plant false memories
15:21in the mind of their patients
15:23even if it would help the patient,
15:25but there's nothing to stop a parent
15:27from trying this out on their overweight or obese teenager.
15:31And when I suggested this publicly,
15:34it created an outcry again.
15:37"There she goes. She's advocating that parents lie to their children."
15:41Hello, Santa Claus. (Laughter)
15:43I mean, another way to think about this is,
15:53which would you rather have,
15:55a kid with obesity, diabetes, shortened lifespan,
15:58all the things that go with it,
16:00or a kid with one little extra bit of false memory?
16:03I know what I would choose for a kid of mine.
16:06But maybe my work has made me different from most people.
16:10Most people cherish their memories,
16:12know that they represent their identity,
16:14who they are, where they came from.
16:16And I appreciate that. I feel that way too.
16:19But I know from my work
16:21how much fiction is already in there.
16:26If I've learned anything from these decades
16:28of working on these problems, it's this:
16:31just because somebody tells you something
16:33and they say it with confidence,
16:35just because they say it with lots of detail,
16:37just because they express emotion when they say it,
16:40it doesn't mean that it really happened.
16:43We can't reliably distinguish true memories from false memories.
16:47We need independent corroboration.
16:51Such a discovery has made me more tolerant
16:54of the everyday memory mistakes
16:56that my friends and family members make.
16:59Such a discovery might have saved Steve Titus,
17:03the man whose whole future was snatched away
17:07by a false memory.
17:09But meanwhile, we should all keep in mind,
17:12we'd do well to,
17:14that memory, like liberty,
17:18is a fragile thing.
17:21Thank you. Thank you.
17:24Thank you. (Applause)
17:27Thanks very much. (Applause)

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