I study human memory and, more specifically, the malleable nature of memory. In hundreds of studies, I have shown that information that is suggested to a person about an event can be integrated with the memory of the event, whether that new information is true or false.  When false, it leads to distortions, elaborations, and even total fabrications. Here, I discuss the paths I crossed while conducting this 50-year body of science. And I discuss some repercussions. Sometimes people are irritated by these findings and try to discredit them (or me). Other times, people are appreciative of these findings and make changes in the way they conduct their professional lives. The important take home message: when someone tells you about a memory from their past, they may describe it in detail, and with confidence, and even with emotion. But that does not mean it is true. False memories can have these same characteristics.

In December 2004, the New York Times reported on that year's winners of the Grawemeyer Awards. The Grawemeyer Awards are given in Psychology and also several other fields (e.g., education, religion, improving world order). That year they were accompanied by a $200,000 prize – amongst the largest for an award in a field that does not have a Nobel Prize. It was with enormous pride that I learned that I had won the award in Psychology. Another news outlet reported that I was the most controversial researcher ever to win the prize, and the most controversial winner since former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev won the 1994 prize for improving world order. The award is for a big, important idea in Psychology. So what was my big, important idea?

A staff member sent me an email about that time, letting me know what the external awards committee had said when summarizing my “idea.” Their summary practically made me weep. The committee said that I had “changed the way that both scientists and lay citizens think about the nature of human memory,” and had “made it clear that human memory is not a literal and faithful recorder of experience.” Of course, we've known for some time that memory is fallible, and just how easy it is for us to forget things. But what my work has shown is that we can also falsely remember things differently from the way they happened, and can remember entire events that never happened.

This work teaches us about the malleable nature of memory. Information suggested to an individual about an event can be integrated with the memory for the event itself, so that what actually occurred, and what was discussed later about what may have occurred, become inextricably interwoven, allowing distortion, elaboration, and even total fabrication from suggestions.

People often ask me how I came up with this idea, and to answer I have to take us back to the 1970s. Back then I was interested in what happened when witnesses were questioned about events they had experienced, important events such as crimes or accidents. I did several studies in which I showed that leading questions could bias what people claimed to have seen.

One aspect of autobiographical memory that has received considerable attention during the past two decades deals with the psychological mechanisms that underlie the memory and report of eyewitnesses. The misinformation effect is particularly concerned with what happens to people when they witness an event, such as a crime or accident, and are later misinformed about some aspect of the original event (Loftus, 1992). As is well known, eyewitnesses are not secluded after witnessing an event. Rather, they may discuss the event with other witnesses, and they are usually extensively questioned by criminal justice personnel both before and during any criminal or civil court appearance (Loftus, 1975, 1979). Such interactions provide ripe opportunities for the introduction of misinformation.

Recent experimental work supports the view that misinformation affects memory, and therefore, that actual eyewitnesses may be susceptible to making unintentional false reports. In fact, false reports have been relatively easy to induce in the laboratory. After exposure to misinformation, subjects have been induced to report having seen a variety of nonexistent objects, such as yield signs (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978), hammers (McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985a), eggs (Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987), mustaches (Gibling & Davies, 1988), broken glass (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) and even something as large as a barn (Loftus, 1975). This research shows that misinformation can be dangerously robust in compromising the accuracy of the memory and report of actual eyewitnesses.

A true case, described using pseudonyms in Witness for the Defense (Loftus and Ketcham, 1991), provides a powerful anecdote showing just how strongly witnesses can believe in their memories – even when their memories are false. The case arose out of an incident that happened early one morning in the spring of 1979 when Sally Blackwell awoke to find an intruder at the foot of her bed. As she raised her head to speak to the man, he put a gun to her head and told her that if she made any noise, he would kill her children. What followed was a two hour ordeal in which both Ms. Blackwell and her teenage daughter Janet were bound, blindfolded, and systematically raped and sodomized by their assailant.

The following morning Sally called Lois Williams, a co-worker, to explain that she would not be coming to work that day. Several hours later, Sally's irate boyfriend began urging her to come up with a name for the man who had assaulted her. He thought the rapist must have been someone she knew, or why else would the man have been so careful to conceal his identity? As Ms. Blackwell testified, he kept saying “It's got to be somebody you know. You've seen him in the neighborhood, you've seen him somewhere before. Just think where you've seen him. You saw him at the grocery store or at church; you've seen him somewhere. You've seen him at a party somewhere.” As he said “party,” according to Ms. Blackwell, a name flashed with the face.

“The past is a foreign country … they do things differently there.” So begins L. P. Hartley's classic book, The Go-Between (1953). In thinking about “flashbulb” memories, specifically about the match between their present character and the past experience that gave rise to them, it is tempting to ask a similarly phrased question: Did they do things differently there?

There is no doubt that present memories about past traumatic episodes persist in the minds of most of us. But were things different then (in reality) than they are now (in our minds)? It turns out that some aspects of traumatic experiences do apparently persist quite accurately, whereas other aspects get altered along the way. These persisting flashbulbs, dotted with error, raise a question about the kind of memory system that can accommodate both persistence and error. What functions would such a system serve, asks Pillemer (this volume)? Equally intriguing is why some traumatic events get transformed into persisting flashbulbs, whereas other traumatic events are entirely repressed in memory for long periods of life?

Persisting flashbulbs that resemble the past

Clearly, we remember details from the traumatic events of our past. We remember the circumstances in which we first learned about shocking public or private tragedies. Take the first major eruption of Mount Saint Helens, which occurred on May 18, 1980. This shocking public event was well known to residents of the northwestern United States.