Rich False Memories of Autobiographical Events Can Be Reversed
By Aileen Oeberst, Merle Madita Wachendörfer, Roland Imhoff, and Hartmut Blank
8 pagesOver three repeated interviews, participants developed false memories of the suggested events under minimally suggestive conditions (27%) and even more so using massive suggestion (56%). We then used two techniques to reduce false memory endorsement, source sensitization and false memory sensitization. This reversed the false memory build-up over the first three interviews, returning false memory rates in both suggestion conditions to the baseline levels of the first interview.
Merely informing people about the possibility of having false memories implanted was enough to get them to second guess their false memories.