Elizabeth Loftus Memory

In her speech on memory, Elizabeth Loftus (2013) asserts, “Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.” Elizabeth Loftus is a memory expert, she does not, however, study forgetting, as some may assume when told what she studies. Loftus (2013) says in her speech, “I study the opposite [of forgetting]: when [people] remember, when they remember things that didn't happen or remember things that were different from the way they really were. I study false memories.” In Loftus’ fascinating speech How reliable is your memory?, she discusses the repercussions false memory can have, the fragility of memory, and the implantation of positive or negative memories.

Loftus begins by examining the case of

Loftus continues this discussion when she explains the fragility of memory.

The questions asked are key; the way they are phrased and the tone of them are of great importance as they have the potential to influence the memory of an incident. Loftus speaks of a study done, in which people who were asked how fast a car smashed into the other car remembered the speed of the accident being higher than it was. This was in comparison to people who were asked how fast they thought the cars were going when they hit each other, who thought the speed of the crash seemed slower. This influence of memory can go even further than this, though, as it was found that memories could even be implanted.

Patients emerging from psychotherapy became convinced that they had experienced some sort of past horrible trauma. Loftus questions the limitations that should come with implanting memories and states that a therapist could not ethically implant memories into a patient but that a parent may consider this. Overall, it seems that Loftus sees implanting memories in a “greater good” scenario to be a reasonable prospect. Loftus (2016) summarizes her speech when she