Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The Formation of False Memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720-725.
Arhe Vaninetti
Research and Statistics, PSY301, Pacific University, Oregon
March 9, 2023
Loftus & Pickrell (1995) created an experimental design as part of their research on false memories and confabulation. Famously referred to as the “Lost in the Mall” study, this research team aimed to find if false memories could be created through the power of suggestion. They selected 24 student participants from the University of Washington population. From there they contacted an older relative of the participants and asked them for three stories from the participant’s childhood (around ages 4-6) that were not traumatic events or events that were retold frequently.
Additionally, the researchers made sure to ask if the participant had ever actually experienced being lost in a mall, as this detail would make the study invalid if the participant had been lost before.
Once the 3 true stories were solidified and the 1 false mall story was added, the researchers sent a questionnaire in the mail that included questions about whether or not the participants remembered the experiences, and how well. The false mall question included additional details that were shallow and vague enough to render it legitimate-seeming, while also being specific to each participant. The participants wrote what they remembered about each event on the questionnaire and sent it back to the researchers. The participants were all interviewed twice in a 1-4 week period, either over the phone or in person. In the first interview, the subjects were retold the stories from the questionnaire (not verbatim, but partially), and then had to tell the researchers how much they remembered about each story. They then had to rate the clarity of each memory from 1-10, and their confidence that if they were given more time, they could remember more details, on a scale of 1-5. The second interview had the same procedure, but once it was over, the participants were debriefed and told about the false mall memory.
Of the 24 participants, 68% of the true memories were remembered, while 25% of the participants claimed that they remembered the false mall memory. When the questionnaire statements were analyzed, the participants used a mean of 138 words to describe the true events, and 49.9 words to describe the false mall event. For one of the participants, she had to use a process of elimination to guess which event was false in the debriefing, which Loftus & Pickrell detailed in the study, stating that she continued to struggle despite the debriefing.
In the discussion section of the article, the researchers suggest that memories are often pieced together with reasonable information from other sources, including suggestions. They state that this may have been the case in this study and similar studies. In the closing, they admit that while this research establishes the phenomenon of faulty memory and confabulation, it does not create a reliable way to distinguish between real and false memories (or a blend of the two).
While this research is sound, it does leave variables open. The time between the first and second interviews were different for many of the participants, and the form of the interviews as well (i.e., in person or over the phone). I would control for the participants socioeconomic status as well as hometown setting (rural vs. urban vs. suburban), as this could make the false mall memory more or less realistic. In my personal experience, I never visited malls as a kid, and I did not often get taken grocery shopping. Furthermore, certain rural populations may not utilize shopping malls or grocery stores for things other than necessities. Inversely, someone who is from an urban area that has convenient access to a mall, and does not fall on the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum, may have been overexposed to malls, and may easily confabulate a story about getting lost in one.
One final detail that should be considered for a contemporary recreation of this study may be the presence of Aphantasia, or the inability of imagining pictures in one’s mind. There is not enough research on this topic to see how it connects to memory and remembering.