Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and Her Impact on Psychology
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus was born in Los Angeles, California on October 16, 1944 to Sidney and Rebecca Fishman (Born, 1997). Life was fairly normal for Dr. Loftus until 1958, when she was only 14, her mother drowned in the pool during a family gathering (Born, 1997). Her “memories” of that horrid day would shape her career and the field of psychology in a nearly immeasurable way but they wouldn’t surface until she was much further along in her academic career.
UCLA was where Dr. Loftus began her advanced schooling with the goal of becoming a math teacher (Fouts, n.d.). However, while studying at UCLA Elizabeth took a freshman psychology course and her passion for psychology was sparked. Not wanting to relinquish her progress on her mathematics degree she pursued two degrees at the same time. In 1966 she graduated from UCLA with Bachelors in mathematics and psychology (Born, 1997). The next step for the young Dr. Loftus was to continue her education on into graduate school, Stanford. While at Stanford her interests in long term memory peaked as did her interests in George Loftus. Dr. Loftus received her Master’s degree in 1967, married Gorge in 1968 (but later divorced in 1991), and her Ph.D. in 1970 all from Stanford (Born, 1977).
After graduation Dr. Loftus took a professor’s position, from 1973 through 2002, at the University of Washington (Fouts, n.d.). In 1974, while working at the university, Dr. Loftus and her colleague, John Palmer, developed the misinformation effect (Fouts, n.d.). The two conducting a study a wrote a journal article titled “Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory” (Fouts, n.d). This study had par...
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... the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Henry & Bryna David Lectureship Award in 2002, and in 2013 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award (Fouts, n.d.).
Despite all her works and achievements Dr. Loftus is still a working professor and researcher. Her contributions began in the 1970s when she was only in her thirties and still continue on today. Dr. Loftus’s work has changed how the memory was perceived, she exposed the natural weaknesses and inconsistencies in eyewitness testimonies, she changed how long lost memories were recovered and the validity they hold and she open the field of psychology to a more extensive side of the cognitive processes. She is the top ranked female in the psychological field and out of the top 100 most eminent people in psychology she is number 58 (Fouts, n.d.). Dr. Loftus has forever sealed her name in the history of psychology.
In chapter one of Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer discusses memory and persuades the reader of its importance. Foer’s primary claim is that memory is essential. Joshua Foer uses a variety of different voicing techniques to create intimate distance. He also uses a variety of analytical and stylistic techniques to emphasize the importance of his claim and to persuade the reader. He supports his argument by discussing the impact of memory on daily life, the positive effects of improving one’s memory, and the incomplete nature of our collective memory as a society without external resources.
Those who are in favor of retrieved memories state that these memories can be repressed and remain unattainable for years until an individual seeks therapy, where these memories can often be uncovered and trauma related to them can be treated (Freyd, 1994). On the other hand, some individuals have expressed concerns with the concept of repressed memories since, according to them, there is little scientific evidence that can support the theory (Patihis, Ho, Tingen, Lilienfeld & Loftus, 2014). In other words, cases where individuals experience traumatic events but often lack memories of these, often do not provide sufficient reliable evidence to make credible arguments. Memory research offers further insight into the controversial topic of “memory wars” by explaining if the notion of repressing memories and placing them into the unconscious is a feasible hypothesis. Furthermore, research presented in this brief will discuss the reliability and usefulness of using recovered memories as evidence in a court cases. Due to the controversial nature of recovered memories in judicial courts and scientific communities, it is important to consider research in the area to determine truthfulness in allegations involving recovered memories, as these have previously posed
Steffens, M., & Mecklenbräuker, S. (2007). False memories: Phenomena, theories, and implications. Zeitschrift Für Psychologie/Journal Of Psychology, 215(1), 12-24. doi:10.1027/0044-3409.215.1.12
...These specifics recalled consist of things which, under normal conditions, we probably would not have ever remembered. The number of detailed facts retained about a particular situation is usually commensurate to the intensity of involvement or proximity to the action in question; therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that while these memories are not always perfectly engrained into our minds, interesting arguments exist which support the possibility of substantial and long-term recall of these matters.
Minor consequences, might for instance, be confusing where one has placed something, like car keys. Such confusion can result in a simple inconvenience such as, the wasting of time. Although more serious consequence might for instance occur when one’s memory tricks the individual into giving false eyewitness accounts that might be costly to him, or other third parties. As such, it is important to critically analyze the dynamics of false memory formation and highlight methods that could be used to identi...
Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century the validity of recovered memories has been hotly debated by the psychoanalytic community. Recovered memories are forgotten memories of traumatic experiences we remember later on in life often by psychoanalysis or psychotherapy that can lead to the possible creation of a pseudomemory. Freud believed that these recovered memories of possible sexual abuse were the solution of problems of the origin of hysteria and obsessional neurosis (1), this is stated in “Seduction Theory” a hypothesis suggested by Freud himself. Seduction Theory, a hypothesis suggested by Freud stated “A repressed memory of an early childhood sexual abuse or molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessive symptoms with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight”(1). This theory was abandoned after only a year after proposing it, as a result of coming to terms with the fact that the memories of his patients were predominantly false, and could have been caused by the suggestive methods he used in their psychoanalytical therapy. Freud’s first case in the study of recovered memories was of Miss G. de B, she came to him at the suggestion of her cousin with a stuttering speech, and after psychoanalysis lead Freud to proclaim that she had been sexually abused by her father despite the fact she had no recollection of such events taking place, at first she whole heartedly believed him until
Similar studies were done to a different set of college students and they tended to have the same results. After giving as much detail about each memory, the students were interviewed about what they may have written done about what they had remembered. During the last part of the experiment, each of the students were debriefed and asked to guess which memory they believed was false.
False Memories are essentially, unintentional human errors, or a state of none-factual creativeness; which results in persons having declared memories of events and situations that did not occur in the actuality of their own lifespan reality history. If they were not unintentional errors they would be deception, which has the nature of a different purpose, morality and legality. False memories have no authenticity, realness or legitimacy, in the subject’s actual life. However they may not be complete false memories: more likely to be a combination of subjugation of previous memory cue’s; or imaginative inventive production, activated and initiated by an origination of external scenario additive as a prompt, indicator or sign, which fuses into memory recall. Therefore ‘False Memories’ are a genuine but inaccurate remembering of experimental data or recall of an genuine occurrences; both of which have rudiments of accuracy and inaccuracy in their transitive attention, giving most ‘False Memories’ partiality.
We can imply this finding of false memory in many ways in our lives. We all should note that our memory cannot be trusted 100% and we should not solely rely on our memory when it comes to making critical decisions. Just like the murder trial example used in earlier, when it comes to eye witnessing, the judge should take possible false memory into account when making the final decisions and try to obtain objective evidence along with the memory of the witness.
Mollon, Phil. Remembering Trauma : A Psychotherapist's Guide To Memory And Illusion. London: Whurr, 2002. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 6 Apr. 2014.
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.
In this essay I shall discuss the work and research contributed by Bartlett, and Loftus as to whether accuracy plays a vital role in eyewitness testimony compared to other aspects of memory use. Retrieval failure is an everyday experience for many of us. We also often experience problems with storing new information. This usually occurs because simply the person concerned is not paying attention. Perhaps more importantly memories can become scrambled, in the process of retrieval; as a result the scrambled memory is recalled-along with mistaken details instead of your original memory.
Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” experiment (1932) is a classic example of false memories. The results of his study found participants would unintentionally alter the information of a story they read in a way that was more reflective of their own lives. Otagaar, et.al. (2013) examined false memories by developing non-believed memories in adults and children about taking a ride in a hot air balloon. The results of this study found that when the participants were asked immediately after reading a passage about this memory, most did not recall going on a hot air balloon. However, when the participants were called back a few months later, a higher percentage of participants recalled having experienc...
What she has discovered over her more than thirty-year career, is that when witnesses are primed with leading questions, the suggestibility of even one word can cause that information to be integrated into a person’s memory then combined with other information to create a composite memory of what they believe is an authentic occurrence, but in reality, it is misinformation acceptance. Here some examples that Dr. Loftus has used in her