Elizabeth Loftus How Reliable Is Your Memory

Shaton A. Green
Reiner
4460

Memory Memory: the means by which we retain and draw on our past experiences to use this information in the present.
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has dedicated decades of her career to studying, not the concept of remembering, but the concept of false memories. In her TED presentation ‘How Reliable is Your Memory?’ she speaks on the inaccuracy of eye witnesses and how a person can be so sure about something, yet be so wrong in the end. In this presentation, she tells that story of Steven Titus, a man who was falsely convicted of rape because of the testimony of the victim. Her testimony put Stephen in prison until the actual culprit, a man that resembled Stephen, was found and convicted for over 50 sexual assault
So when it comes to situations like Stephen Titus and the women who falsely accused him I would believe her because she earned my sympathy and sometimes I will let my emotions block logic. That has a lot to do with my Myers-Briggs personality type. The most interesting study she mentioned was a one that one that involved soldiers of the US military. Individuals were put through interrogations that would be equivalent to what they would experience if they were captured as prisoners of war. The soldiers were put through half an hour of verbal and physical abuse and then they asked to identify who executed to ‘interview’. This study found that when the soldier were feed misleading information they were more likely to misidentify their interrogator. Loftus mentions many studies that showcase how easy it is to manipulate the human psyche into believing something that didn’t happen. There are people who make a living from filling people with false memories and manipulating what they know to be true and while this can have very negative effects on people, I think there can be
In order to now lose your keys, put them in the same place every time without fail. When it comes to storing important documents such as a passport put it one drawer and leave it there so that when the time comes that you need it, you’ll know exactly where to look. In this video Levitin gave tips on how to avoid the stress we put on ourselves. Any stress in my life can defiantly be avoided through ‘prospective hindsight’, but who I am as a person makes that very difficult. I think something that most people lack, me included, is a good sense of discipline. It takes a fair amount of work to not be stressed and that’s what Daniel alludes to but never really states. What he’s saying can be useful to anyone that wants to work to be stress