User:Knwilzbach

My plan is to update Elizabeth Loftus' Wikipedia page, specifically focusing on "The Memory Wars" section and the information about her investigating false memories from suggestive interventions like the lost in a shopping mall technique. The article already touches on the basics of how Loftus completed the experiment, but lacks detail of the whole method. I would add how the technique Loftus used is known as forced feedback, and involved recruiting a group of adult participants, along with a close relative of each participant to help the researchers gather a summary of childhood events that actually occurred. Loftus and the relatives would then make a detailed, but fabricated summary of when the participant was lost in a shopping mall. After the subjects were told these summaries, they were asked whether they recalled them, and if so, to provide more details about the events. Subjects returned to the laboratory over the next two weeks, and were again told the summaries and probed to see if they had any more recollections. The article already mentions the rate of people who accepted these fictitious memories as their own, and it is only off by my sources rate by only a few percentage points. But I would add that in a few of the cases where people would accept these false memories, that they would embellish the memories and make them more vivid when describing them.

I would go on to mention that newly formed false memories tend to be held with confidence, expressed with detail, and experienced with emotion. These false memories and beliefs also can have consequences that affect people's ensuing thoughts and behaviors.