Elizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely,
she studies false memories, when people either remember things that
didn't happen or remember them differently from the way they really
were. It's more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some
startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical
questions we should all remember to consider.
Elizabeth Loftus altered the course of legal history by revealing that memory is not only unreliable, but also mutable. Since the 1970s, Loftus has created an impressive body of scholarly work and has appeared as an expert witness in hundreds of courtrooms, bolstering the cases of defendants facing criminal charges based on eyewitness testimony, and debunking “recovered memory” theories popular at the time, as in her book The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (with Katherine Ketcham).
Since then, Loftus has dedicated herself to discovering how false memories can affect our daily lives, leading her to surprising therapeutic applications for memory modification -- including controlling obesity by implanting patients with preferences for healthy foods.
Elizabeth Loftus on the Web
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