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PSYCHOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
was real or false news? Or told a friend a childhood experience to a friend and
some gossip, only to learn you got the filling in memory gaps with reasonable
news from the friend? If so, you experi- guesses. We all do it. After more retellings,
enced source amnesia — you retained those guessed details — now absorbed
the memory of the event but not of its into your memory — may feel as real as
context. Source amnesia, along with the if you had actually experienced them
misinformation effect, is at the heart of (Roediger et al., 1993). False memories, like
many false memories. Authors, song- fake diamonds, seem so real. False mem-
ories can be persistent. Imagine that we
evan Agostini/Invision/AP fer from it. They think an idea came from were to read aloud a list of words such as
writers, and comedians sometimes suf-
candy, sugar, honey, and taste. Later, we ask
their own creative imagination, when in
you to recognize those words in a larger
fact they are unintentionally plagiarizing
something they earlier read or heard.
Source amnesia also helps explain déjà list. If you are at all like the people in a
famous experiment (Roediger & McDermott,
vu (French for “already seen”). Two- thirds 1995), you would err three out of four
of us have experienced this fleeting, eerie times — by falsely remembering a new
sense that “I’ve been in this exact situa- but similar word, such as sweet. We more
tion before.” The key to déjà vu seems to easily remember the gist — the general
be familiarity with a stimulus or one like idea — than the words themselves.
yamabika y/Shutterstock we ran into it before (Cleary & Claxton, 2018; we hear others falsely remember events,
it, coupled with uncertainty about where
False memories are contagious. When
we tend to make the same memory mis-
Urquhart et al., 2018). Normally, we experience
takes (Roediger et al., 2001). We get confused
a feeling of familiarity (thanks to temporal
Was Alexander Hamilton a U.S. president? lobe processing) before we consciously about where we originally learned of the
remember details (thanks to hippocampus
false event — Did I already know that or
We often misuse familiar information. In one study, and frontal lobe processing). Sometimes, am I learning it from others? — and adopt
many Americans mistakenly recalled Alexander
Hamilton — whose face appears on the U.S. though, we may have a feeling of familiar- others’ false memories (Hirst & Echterhoff,
$10 bill, and who is the subject of Lin- Manuel ity without conscious recall. As our amaz- 2012). It’s easy to see how false memories
Miranda’s popular Broadway musical — as a ing brain tries to make sense of this source can spread as online misinformation.
U.S. president (Roediger & DeSoto, 2016). amnesia, we get an eerie feeling that we’re Memory construction errors also help
reliving some earlier part of our life. explain why some people have been sent
For an overview of research to prison for crimes they never committed.
by Elizabeth Loftus, see the 6-minute Video: Human “Do you ever get that strange feeling Of 375 people (60 percent of whom were
Factors in Wrongful Convictions. of vujà dé? Not déjà vu; vujà dé. It’s the African American) who were later proven
distinct sense that, somehow, something not guilty by DNA testing, 69 percent had
SOURCE AMNESIA just happened that has never happened been convicted because of faulty eye-
before. Nothing seems familiar. And then witness identification (Innocence Project,
What is the weakest part of a memory? suddenly the feeling is gone. Vujà dé.” 2021; Wells, 2020). “Hypnotically refreshed”
Its source. An example: On a recent anni- — Comedian George Carlin, Funny Times, memories of crimes often contain similar
versary of the 9/11 terror attack, I [DM] December 2001 errors. If a hypnotist asks leading ques-
mentioned to my wife my vivid memory tions (Did you hear loud noises?), witnesses
of our Manhattan daughter’s call as she REtRIEVE REMEMBER may weave that false information into
witnessed — while we talked — the hor- ANSWERS IN APPENDIX F their memory of the event. Memory con-
ror of the second tower’s collapse. But 16. What — given the commonness of struction errors also seem to be at work in
no, replied my wife, whose memory is source amnesia — might life be like if we many “recovered” memories of childhood
usually far more reliable than mine: “She remembered all our waking experiences and abuse. See Thinking Critically About: Can
made that call to me.” all our dreams? Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse Be
Clearly, one of us had reported the call Repressed and Then Recovered?
to the other, who was now misattribut- RECOGNIZING FALSE
ing the source. (“I was definitely speaking MEMORIES
to Dad,” our daughter later informed us, source amnesia faulty memory for how,
triggering a smug smile from her error- We often are confident of our inaccurate when, or where information was learned or
imagined.
prone father.) Have you ever dreamed memories. Because the misinformation
about an event and later wondered effect and source amnesia happen out- déjà vu that eerie sense that “I’ve
experienced this before.” Cues from the
whether it really happened? Or remem- side our awareness, it is hard to separate current situation may unconsciously trigger
bered learning something on social false memories from real ones (Schooler retrieval of an earlier experience.
media but then questioned whether it et al., 1986). You can likely recall describing

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