Rich false memories of autobiographical events can be reversed

False memories of autobiographical events can create enormous problems in forensic settings (e.g., false accusations). While multiple studies succeeded in inducing false memories in interview settings, we present research trying to reverse this effect (and thereby reduce the potential damage) by means of two ecologically valid strategies. We first successfully implanted false memories for two plausible autobiographical events (suggested by the students’ parents, alongside two true events). Over three repeated interviews, participants developed false memories (measured by state-of-the-art coding) 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 (alerting interviewees to possible external sources of the memories, e.g., family narratives) and false memory sensitization (raising the possibility of false memories being inadvertently created in memory interviews, delivered by a new interviewer). 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 (i.e., to ∼15% and ∼25%, respectively). By comparison, true event memories were endorsed at a higher level overall and less affected by either the repeated interviews or the sensitization techniques. In a 1-y follow-up (after the original interviews and debriefing), false memory rates further dropped to 5%, and participants overwhelmingly rejected the false events. One strong practical implication is that false memories can be substantially reduced by easy-to-implement techniques without causing collateral damage to true memories.

The impact of ego-involvement in the creation of false childhood memories

An experiment employed a 'familiar-informant false-narrative procedure' to examine the effects of ego involvement manipulation on the creation of false memories for suggested events. Our main sample consisted of 54 Serbian adolescent students. During the pre-testing stage, students' parents (N=54) provided details from their children childhoods, which were used to create stimuli for the subsequent stages. Half of the participants were given an ego-involving suggestion- a short written statement that claimed that people with higher intelligence have a better and more detailed memory of their childhood. We hypothesized that ego-involved group would recollect more childhood events in general, create more false memories and be more confident in its' authenticity and clarity. Implanted event was recognized as autobiographic by 24% respondents in the testing stage and by 44.4% respondents in the retesting stage. There were significant qualitative differences between authentic and false memories: authentic memories were assessed as more reliable and clearer than the false ones. Ego-involvement manipulation had no impact on the frequency or quality of false memories reported by the participants. Even though the specific ego-involvement manipulation was not successful, our findings suggest that other motivating strategies we employed pushed the respondents into accepting false memory suggestion in the retesting stage. Future research could benefit from testing more elaborate ego-involving procedures.

Nationens ansigt. Sport og nationalisme

The Face of the Nation. Sport and NationalismThis article looks at some of the ways in which sport and nationalism connect and how, in an age of ever closer political and economic ties between EU member states, the world of sport provides a framework for the promotion of individual national identity. Sport and especially large-scale televised sports extravaganzas are not, as is sometimes suggested, events which cement notions of global community but rather arenas in which nationalism and national feelings are confirmed time and time again. I look here at a number of different theoretical views on the nature of nationalism and relate these to how the world of sport acts out these theories in practice. Special emphasis is placed on Benedict Anderson’s idea of Imagined communities, which has come to play such an important role in the understanding of the premises which form the basis for national identity. I also look at Michael Billig’s idea of Banal Nationalism and pursue the idea that sport seems to represent an interesting paradox of banal vs non-banal.The second part of this article analyses how the printed media in Denmark wrote about the Danish national team during the finals of the European Cup in 1992. I will examine how the press reinforced ideas of national identity and what images and symbolic references were used to this end.

Repeated Exposure to Suggestion and the Creation of False Memories

The purpose of the present study was to extend research on repetition and illusory truth to the domain of eyewitness suggestibility Specifically, we assessed whether repeated exposure to suggestion, relative to a single exposure, facilitates the creation of false memory for suggested events After viewing a video of a burglary, subjects were asked questions containing misleading suggestions, some of which were repeated Their memory for the source of the suggestions was tested The results show that following repeated (relative to a single) exposure to suggestion, subjects were more likely to (a) claim with high confidence that they remembered the suggested events from the video (Experiment 1) and (b) claim that they consciously recollected witnessing the suggested events (Experiment 2) The effects of repeated exposure were highly reliable and were observed over retention intervals as long as 1 week