Why your childhood memories may not actually have happened. [View all]

[Kurska]

This may come as a shock to people (or not if you've ever actually interacted with a child), but children are incredibly impressionable. If you repeatedly tell a very young child something happened to them the bottom line is that they will generally end up believing it. I once had a professor who convinced their child they went to Euro Disney by telling them that they did and supplying details. Research holds that if the professor hadn't fessed up, then that child would probably have believed they did well into their adult life. These are called false memories and the process whereby you give them to people is memory implantation. This is an incredibly well studied psychological phenomenon. To deny the existence of it is asinine in the extreme.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/09/elizabeth_loftus_interview_false_memory_research_on_eyewitnesses_child_abuse.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_implantation

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/02/19/how-to-instill-false-memories/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome

Oh okay sure mr scientists, you can implant false memories in the laboratory about being lost in a fair. Surely you can't do that with incredibly negative memories like oh say, sexual abuse can you?

Actually..

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/08/negative-false-memories-are-more-easily.html

Negative false memories memories are EASIER to make people (especially children) believe.

The important part here is that no one is accusing someone who might have a false memory of being abused as a child of lying. Lying implies that the person knows it isn't true yet is saying it any ways. It is entirely possible that a person can genuinely believe a made up event happened to them as a child. These people are indeed victims, often the victims of their overzealous prosecutors or the victims of irresponsible therapists practicing memory "recovery".

None of this means that child sexual abuse isn't common. None of this means that everyone or even a majority of people who accuses someone of abusing them in the distant past is incorrect. None of this means that you need to doubt every memory you've ever had of as a child. What it means is that children are suggestible and that people with malicious intent or well meaning people blinded by their convictions can indeed convince a child they were abused when no such abuse happened.

All this means is that a person can deeply and genuinely believe an event happened, yet it may have not. That is why even a entirely believable allegation should be viewed, if not skeptically, at least with caution in the absence of solid evidence.