The Power of Suggestion: How to Implant False Memories

[rzoggyie]

I have started a blog to get the FM()F to stop speaking for survivors of child sexual abuse. The claim children don’t dissociate. You can Google my blog memoir of a redemptive life. Once you get to the blog you’ll find the link on the right side of the page. Thanks, Rosie

[HaphazardCrappola]

I think this experiment just proved that as easily as you can implant a false memory of something bad happening. You can easily implant a false memory that something bad didn't happen.

[fartsam08]

@HaphazardCrappola I can't decide which is more amazing. The truth in your comment or your channel name.

[HaphazardCrappola]

@fartsam08 Fart Sam, my name is more amazing.

[tracyeldred]

Makes you wonder how much of our memories is 'made up' from misguided beliefs or suggestion from others doesn't it?

[sweethippy67]

having an eating disorder may correlate to abuse but not neccessarily have to have been the cause of it one bit.

[jfsfrnd]

Why doesn't she create false memories of sadistic child abuse? Because it's not possible?

[deezee871]

@jfsfrnd Creating those kinds of memories is possible. Back in the 80's or 90's, a lot of women started to believe that they were sexually abused by their fathers because there was a big "repressed memories" fad going on. Some of the women who believed they may have repressed memories went to see mental health professionals about it, and they unintentionally created false memories in the minds of their patients.

[jfsfrnd]

@deezee871 The 80's or 90's? Exactly when did women start to believe they were sexually abused by their fathers because of the ''repressed memory fad''? Give me a better timeline. When did the first person falsely claim that their father sexually abused them because of a therapist implanting those memories in them?

[deezee871]

@jfsfrnd I don't know exactly when everything happened. It's not like it was in a textbook or something. I just know that there was a repressed memories fad and it took a long time for it to die down a little. There are some references to it in psychological journals; I remember reading about it last year when I was looking for a research topic. But memories have been long-proven to be highly malleable and easily manipulated.

[jfsfrnd]

@deezee871 People can also create fads when it is convenient to do so.

[jfsfrnd]

@deezee871 1 - What about the adults who (as children or teens) repressed and afterward remembered sexual and ritual child abuse who NEVER got therapy. Elizabeth Lofthus seems to be saying that ALL these memories if repressed come from someone who went to therapy and were manipulated to believe in them. If she was to be honest she would create memories of sexual and ritual child/teen abuse in adults who had no previous memory of them.

[jfsfrnd]

@deezee871 2 - I still don't see how creating a memory of being lost in a mall or spilling punch on someone and being upset by it has any relation to being emotionally, mentally and physically/sexually violated/tortured and repressing all of part of it. One therapist tried this with me - told me my eating disorder meant I was sexually abused as a child. I left the therapy. So I am not saying that therapists did not start doing this, I am asking what their motivation was for doing so.

[AscelKadhem]

You can't compare your study to how we remember trauma! If something in your life really bad happens, you could never forget it.

[k39564]

maybe they did . can you prove it did not happen ?? this is stupid

[gpmweb]

Sloppy science I think. It discounts the fact that subjects may have been lying to please the interviewer and having made that lie, it was too embarrassing to retract at later stages. I interview hundreds a people over a year and have been lied to frequently, often because is what people think I want to hear - doubt if any of them are false memories.

[SarAein1]

This doesn't impress me at all. All she is saying to the subjects is that you have a repressed memory that is true/verified. Stupid.

[CollisionTheory08]

@SarAein1 obviously you don't know about her research. Her goal was to actually call into question the validity of "repressed" memories. She is stating maybe the majority of "repressed" memory is simply products of the power of suggestion, either by books (i.e. The Courage to Heal by Bass and Davis) or by terrible psychiatrists (i.e. the Shauna Fletcher case).

[SarAein1]

@CollisionTheory08 SO, We're basically saying the same thing...it's not impressive.

[ashunga543]

that is inception kind of shit lol

[OsoLoco40]

Documentary Expose

[Nukepositive]

And people thought the movie Inception was fictional. . . .

[trulynot]

You cant pull this shit on smart people. They are too aware - that is what makes them smart.

[Camboninja94]

did anyone else notice that the length of this video was 4:20 exactly........

[KingOfMadCows]

There have been some very interesting research on false memory. There was one where researchers managed to get some participants to believe that they had met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland when they were kids. One experiment suggest that implanted memory can affected behavior. They had participants rate how much they liked certain foods. Then they implanted in them a memory of a bad experience with eggs. Weeks later, they had the participants rate the foods again and egg was rated much lower.

[theSeductionKing]

You dont think they do this research to inform those who watch Jerry Springer do you?

This is all about control at the highest levels.

[nightangelstars]

@johntheother It does seem unethical, yes, but there are strict rules about what is okay to do to research participants and how you treat them afterwards. There is generally always a debriefing afterwards and support is offered, such as psychotherapy. The debriefing would tell them exactly what had been done and why - participants cannot simply be left in the dark with false memories, though it might seem that that was done from the little that Dr. Loftus says.

[MrHinchapelotas]

I find this amoral too, it makes me rethink reality again!

[futbolangel02]

This is what you call "Fucking with people's heads". It is obviously a fashionable pass time ACTIVITY used by the government/corporation/industr­y(whatever you call the mother fuckers that are controlling this world) to assure that humans (citizens) will never achieve truth and happiness. Ahhhh the dream....mindfuck everyone.

[tomcornhole]

buLL Crap. this shrink is confusing false memories with recovered memory therapy.

probably on purpose

[HKTeeVee]

@tomcornhole recovered memory therapy IS frequently the implantation of memory... such as the woman who was convinced she was sexually abused, yet when examined by doctors, was revealed to still be intact, contradicting the story... this is a highly regarded study she's talking about.

[tomcornhole]

@HKTeeVee go research the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Find out how the primary architects of this Crap Organization were former publishers of a pedophile porn mag called 'finger'.

Alex Constantine has the true story. then convince yourself of the innocuity

of this servant of the corrupt system. you gotta see how this psychological smoke screen has been used to PROTECT child abusers.

for real.

[HKTeeVee]

@tomcornhole Regardless of the merits of this particular organization, False memory is a scientifically valid phenomenon backed by various studies.

[tomcornhole]

@HKTeeVee valid point, however, this is the foundation that provides 'experts' for court testimony! they are NOT psychologists. so THAT's a huge problem right there.

the pre-eminent 'experts' on recovered memory and false memory are NITWITS and WORSE from this fraudulent, obfuscating 'foundation'.

yet their testimony is accepted by judges and juries, WHY?

[HKTeeVee]

@tomcornhole okay so I looked up that org and it def looks sketchy, however, not sure what Loftus' study has to do with that, it's a very basic & good study of memory.

also, um, have you seen our (in) justice system lately? very flawed. Too much trust in authority figures without merit is problematic in any case. Highly trained experts are the ones, after all, who implanted false memories in people in the first place. Read "Mad in America". very messed up things done by shrinks...

[smcmillan88]

25% of people? That's about the same percent of people I consider stupid.

[stealthswimmer]

so 25% of the people fell for it. That means that 75% of the people didn't. Still, shows they might be on to something. Seems like it could be useful stuff.

[jasonx1972]

This is just 'Pacing & Leading' a technique that has been used for decades. Basically P&L involves stating a number of true statements that cannot be taken as false (the pacing part), then stating a statement that could be true (the leading part), The person then assumes the leading statement to be as true as the ones the know to be actually true.

It is used in sales quite heavily.

[rosiertodd]

Just because someone can recall being age 4 and remembering a sandbox that they played in doesn't mean they have "false memory".

I can recall being lost in JC Penny when I was 4.

I recall someone using the store intercom and saying that a little boy was lost. My mother found me there it was near the customer service booth.

[HKTeeVee]

@rosiertodd The incident had never happened. They interviewed the parents and found out whether the child had ever been lost, if "no", they then proceeded to convince the adult that as a child they had been lost and they just couldn't remember it until now. Of course you can remember events from age 4, that's not being disputed. But the process of memory is less solid than we experience it, it relies heavily on imagination and re-creation.

[kid29a]

interesting conclusion

[thetimman00]

Isn't this fun? Messing with the "subjects". Ha ha ha ha ha.

[dunndudebemelol]

The whole sexual thing is off by a mile!

[italianchappy]

many "psychologists" create these imaginations with terrible economic consequences for patients and other people as well, in particular when sexual abuse is involved.

[perfecttimingNO]

Guess I am just spoiled by the TED series. They are all so well done. Check that out on Youtube if you don't already know about them.

[perfecttimingNO]

Is she giving this lecture in someone's garage. What a crappy looking place for a presentation.

[Andybaby]

A bunch of pre school teachers went to jail in the USA over this.. the kids said they were ALL abused.

Later it was revealed it was all baloney, as this woman describes in the last bit.

I think I guy plea bargained, and is STILL in jail!

[hoodmilk]

hahahahahahahahaaaaa. Vicious animal attacks! That's great.

[dstone2004]

Subliminal Programming (SP) can make a person say, think, believe,do anything, change their religious beliefs, change their sexual orientation and even control a persons dreams while sleeping.

The truth about SP is being suppressed by disinformation, and some people believe that SP is used on the general public to make us believe SP doesn't work.

Why? Because SP, especially audio SP, is very powerful and effective.

SP can be used to pacify the masses, or make individuals go on a killing spree.

[johntheother]

This video impresses me not because of the apparent power of applied psychology, rather im blown away at the total lack of ethicacy of what a pack of academics are cheerfully willing to do to members of the public. I cant begin to imagine what id do to somebody who I discovered had altered my memories. It seems not quite as bad as murder. Am I the only person who finds this shockingly amoral?

[alltherestaretaken]

The psychologists are just studying us, I'm disgusted at how their research is used by politicians to implant false ideas such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam was a threat to anything other than ants, that Iraq and al Qaeda had anything to do with each other... etc. The Power of Nightmares (BBC Documentary on Google Video) explores how the public is shepherded.

[kaje01]

Hmm... Do you think you would have been a nazi if you lived in germany during world war 2? Maybe you've already been brainwashed into supporting horrible practices and you just don't realize how bad they are.

If your answer is a resounding "NO" to what I said above, then you might also fall victim to one of these studies.

I think if someone did this to you, changed your memories, then told you it was all fake, that you would come away a better person who is less likely to be brainwashed.

[akarikaty]

@johntheother If I were one of those subjects, I imagine I would feel a little foolish, but I think "shockingly immoral" is overstated. I have a memory of being lost in a department store when I was a small child, and I remember being scared at the time, but when I look back on that memory now, it does not cause me any emotional pain whatsoever.

[akarikaty]

@johntheother Furthermore, these studies have given us the knowledge that can and already has been used to save innocent people. There have been many cases of women accusing their fathers of raping them because they have discovered so-called "repressed memories" with the "help" of their psychotherapists. Thanks to studies such as these, we now know that those "repressed memories" were most likely false memories created with the persuasive techniques of their therapists.

[LordZentei]

@johntheother

Apart from the 11 people who thumbed you up, probably a lot of other knee-jerkers would agree. However, these were VOLUNTEERS who participated in a study they KNEW was about memory alteration.

In any case, this research is very important seeing as society places a great deal of stock in eyewitness accounts and memories dredged up after interrogation. If it is this easy to convince people they experienced made up events, we need to be on our guard more than we currently are.

[Ahzyo]

@johntheother Mmmm... probably not the only person. They're just simply demonstrating a point.



[4G3NTanon]

@johntheother I understand that the researchers after the study let everyone "off the hook" and told the subjects what had been done.

[KingOfMadCows]

@johntheother Participants are told before the experiment that they may be harmed and they can back out any time during the experiment.

Also, at the time when Loftus was doing her research, there was widespread reports of bizarre child abuse incidents involving ritual sacrifice. What had happened was that religious fundamentalist backed psychotherapists were basically unintentionally implanting kids with these memories of satanic abuse. Loftus' research helped put an end to that.

[tevez412]

@johntheother You mean immoral? It isn't immoral for the sake of millions of people who have memories implanted permanently to have someone like Elizabeth Loftus conduct studies on willing PARTICIPANTS who were debriefed later, and expose these techniques used by psychiatrists everywhere.

[tevez412]

@fredroespi no shit it is, which means it has a correct definition and should be used properly. dipshit

[tevez412]

@fredroespi google the meaning of amoral ok

[MistressMolly77]

@johntheother It is quite moralless (I'm not sure weather it's amoral or immoral, so I'll say that. But you get the point.)

[145863x2]

@johntheother

Murder would kill you and artificial or temporary memory is not necessarily bad, its a natural process we undergo while learning all the time but then we also likewise realize it into our reality and this is only how it could be abused and is just a trust issue rather than labeling the entire concept as amoral. Why murder; it would loose clients,with a suffering client, greater the potential to self interest through solution. Knowledge deprivation is suffering under manipulation

[TangomanX2008]

@johntheother

Oh, if you think thats scary, think of this lady when the next time you see a Disney commercial tells you to remember about your happy childhood memories at Disneyland.

[tuackanxu]

The animal attacks are pretty over-the-edge, sure, but I'd just as soon chalk the loose moral code to the fact that those scientists were Canadian. No country could be so... Canadian without something to hide.

And anyways, this is an attempt to discredit suggestive psychotheraputic techniques. You remember the big controversy about Satanic child rapist cults? You know, the ones that actually don't check out in the slightest if one examines the data?

That's worse.

[terracottaheart]

@tuackanxu Have you ever been to Canada or meet a Canadian? Too bad ignorance can be just as easily implanted in the mind via verbal suggestion.

[tuackanxu]

@terracottaheart It saddens me that I need to explain the joke...

Yes, I have been to Canada.

Yes, I have met Canadians.

No, I do not actually think that Canada is planning to corrupt humanity via mind-manipulation. That's just silly

Everyone knows that's more of a New Zealand sort of move anyways

[tomgeorgejr]

@johntheother 1) It's not a memory of something that is horrifying. If they did that, then I would agree with you.

2) If they had implanted a really happy memory, would you still be so upset?

3) If there is no harm to anyone involved in this experiment, unlike for example, animal testing, how is this immoral?

[Sheldonwh]

@johntheother First of all, I'm shocked that 14 people gave you the "thumbs up" without pointing out that there's no such word as "ethicacy," and that your meaning is almost completely lost in your poor sentence structure. More to the point, the researchers aren't being amoral or unethical. They implanted innocuous memories into these people, and then, as always, follow a strict debriefing technique afterward to ensure that the volunteers aren't harmed. Take a science class or shut up.

[ShawnsterVideos]

@Sheldonwh I respectfully disagree. The researchers became leaders in their field and earned big cash for presenting findings on tour, after using a fellow human in experimentation. The researchers' behaviour does not end at the completion of the experiment. Their publications will continue to earn income, and the test subjects earn nothing in return.

[Sheldonwh]

@ShawnsterVideos Your argument seems to be that people can't be considered ethical if they make money. That's a ridiculous conclusion. Whether they make a million dollars or none, the ethics of the study is decided by an independent board called a Human Subjects Institutional Review Board. The research that Loftus does is totally harmless; if it weren't she wouldn't be approved by the HSIRB. It makes no difference whether the test subjects earn money. They were volunteers, not employees.

[ShawnsterVideos]

@Sheldonwh Fame & fortune at the expense of an uniformed test subject is wrong. That is my point. Your opinion of my point as "ridiculous" can be compared to out dated morals prior to the Stanford Prison Experiment - 1971. Dr. Zimbardo apologized many times for his Prison Experiment, before the Human Subjects Institutional Review Board weighed in on using humans for science & profit.

Prof Loftus is an attention whore, caring nothing of her subjects & never even thanks them for participation.

[HaphazardCrappola]

@Sheldonwh Guinea Pig Kids

[outsidepers]

@johntheother Participants at the end of the experiment sign a form agreeing to the release of the findings and that they are ok with what happened. Standard practise required by the BPS and APA.

Stop crying about a world which you clearly don't understand.

[likespinningplanets]

@johntheother someone is bitter. happen to get lost in a shopping mall at a young age?

[johntheother]

@likespinningplanets circumstantial ad hom - put your flash cards away sigmund

[likespinningplanets]

@johntheother nah you'll be alright

[ShawnsterVideos]

@johntheother Agreed. The INTENT TO DECEIVE test subjects by academics is amoral, regardless by professor, educator, or scientist doing research. Only if the people being manipulated into having false memories were told at the start they were being lied to - can such false memory experiments be partially ethical under rules of informed consent. Not only were people USED in testing, but these academics continue to ABUSE their volunteers with each presentation that earns them money and/or fame.

[FoolishTheMortal]

@ShawnsterVideos All they did was ask if something happened and to tell them about it.

[ShawnsterVideos]

@FoolishTheMortal No matter what was asked, the test subjects were used, then discarded. Afterward, the academics published the results, took credit for the experiment, and made themselves rich & famous on touring stages without giving any monetary reward to test subjects.

[jman9001]

@johntheother

You've managed to miss the point epically. The point is that you are generating false memories all the time, with or without Elizabeth Loftus. Methinks you are just feeling uncomfortable because she has revealed the fallibility of memory to you and you were under incorrect impression that without those meddling psychologists your brain would be a pristine island of truth.

[JBlue761982]

@jman9001 I was just getting ready to defend this brilliant and very important line of research when I read your comment. I could not have said it better myself. The only thing I would add is that all participants were debriefed extensively after their involvement in these studies.

[HaphazardCrappola]

@jman9001 Isn't she a meddling psychologist set on proving that you can convince someone that something happened to them when it didn't? Methinks you need to re-listen to the premise of this "research". People AREN'T generating false memories UNTIL they are being subjected to "research" because they didn't have these memories in the first place UNTIL it was suggested that they did- and I'm assuming under hypnosis. Last time i checked the video is called Power of Suggestion not Faulty Memory.

[mrzack888]

i would also bet these 25% also probably support George Bush and his illegal war in Iraq.

[mrzack888]

it's called NLP. works on most people, because most people in the bell curve bump are sheep.

[Mastikator]

Other people aren't sheep?

[mrzack888]

the head of the curve are sheep dog like me, the ones trailing the curve would be considered lamb chop.

[Mastikator]

The sheepiest are always the ones claiming not to be a sheep.

[mrzack888]

the most lamb chopest are always the ones claiming others to be the sheepiest for calling other sheep.

[Mastikator]

Sheep say "bah", sheeple say "sheep".

[greatbroad]

I run with the wolves and am The Bitch. I eat sheep.

[mrzack888]

then you must be with the New World Order.

[greatbroad]

@ mrzack888

Then short-sighted judgments are one of your vices, my friend, please forgive me for saying.

For me, I like to click on a person's channel, to check them out if I'm not liking what I think they are saying.

[mrzack888]

@greatbored

my friend, your comments on eating sheep are misleading, and may be mistaken for something other than desirable.

[greatbroad]

@ mrzack888

If I had $1 for every time I was called a bitch on YT, I would be rich.

So, I go with it; I say: I am not a bitch, I am The Bitch, and you may call me Ms. Bitch.

People also say they want me dead. As a She Bitch, my prey mainly are the false illusions, hopping around-- and the unreported happenings hiding in the bushes...

--I can really 'get one's goat' if you know what I mean.

[zslastman]

hahaha

teenagers make me laugh

[greatbroad]

@ zslastman

What teenagers?

[McArrowni]

wasn't that a wresting group in the 90s?

[HaphazardCrappola]

@Mastikator But the "Sheep" called you a Sheep way before this lady demonstrated false memories could be implanted in the brain. The later Sheep called the prior "Sheep" a conspiracy theorist and therefor wrong. Who is the real sheep?

[Mastikator]

@HaphazardCrappola Dude that's a 2 year old comment.

[HaphazardCrappola]

@Mastikator I am well aware that the comment is more then 2 years old. But comments like these help me grasp the general psyche of humans which seems to be don't believe in something until someone of "authority" (intellectual, political or religious) confirms it.