False Memories Easily Created, Researchers Discover
About one-third of the people who were exposed to a fake print ad describing a visit to Disneyland and how they met and shook hands with Bugs Bunny said later they remembered or knew the event happened to them.
The scenario described in the ad never occurred because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. cartoon character and wouldn't be featured in any Walt Disney Co. property, according to University of Washington memory researchers Jacquie Pickrell and Elizabeth Loftus.
Pickrell will make two presentations on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society (APS) on Sunday (June 17) in Toronto and at a satellite session of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition in Kingston, Ontario, on Wednesday.
"The frightening thing about this study is that it suggests how easily a false memory can be created," said Pickrell, UW psychology doctoral student.
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http://unisci.com/stories/20012/0613011.htmApparently the Swifties got together recently and somehow reached some sort of "group realization" that led them to believe untruths about John Kerry. I don't know the whole story, but I actually think that rather than lying, they were somehow tricked into believing the lies they are spreading.
Any opinions?