We've all likely experienced false memories at some point or another. It turns out, false memories can occur from mere observation. In one study, participants were asked to perform certain tasks and observed others performing different tasks. When asked about which ones they had performed, participants falsely remembered doing activities they had only observed.
This doesn't come as too much of a shock to me. When it comes to performing seemingly insignificant tasks like shaking a bottle (a task some participants were instructed to do in the study), I can see how they might be easily confused. My roommates and I recently cleaned our apartment, yet if you asked me to recite what I specifically did, I might easily mistake my roommate's actions for my own.
Surprisingly, in a different study, participants had false memories even after explicitly being warned not to mistake observed behaviors for their own. Making a conscious effort to differentiate between observed and performed behavior would seem like a rather easy task, yet apparently, it isn't as easy as I thought. What do you think can account for this behavior?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439871734269054.html
I have experienced a lot of situations where I do something and then after I have no recollection of what it was that I did. The other day my roommate and I also were cleaning our room coincidentally and I guess I moved one of her books and put it in my desk. She was looking for her book the next day and asked me if I knew where it was and I didn't. I did not realize how easy it is to get these insignificant tasks confused until this lesson.
I think one reason for participants confusing others actions for their own even after being warned not to do so is due to the limitations of short term memory. The duration of short term memory is often only 10-15 seconds so a participant could very easily for get the warning only a few seconds into the experiment. Furthermore, interference could also lead to a participant forgetting the warning. If I was given a list of many and/or complex tasks to complete with a team as part of an experience, I would be so focused on completing the tasks, that I would forget any warnings given to me ahead of time and would also most likely confuse what members of my team did vs what I did.
I really enjoyed your post. I agree. One thing I was told as a child was that if you tell a lie enough times - you will believe it to be true.
Not sure how true that is - but it has often come up with peers that seems to always lie about very little things. I told myself that to them - that is their reality.
False memories are very interesting, and at the surface seem quite wild but underneath we realize how common they really are. This is especially prevalent with the circumstances you explained with the little things, which I know occurs to me many times.
I can't say that I remember too many examples of this behavior (though I'm sure that's exactly the point...), but this happens SO often with most of my friends.
It's not that they're more absent minded in the situation, I think it's more that they just aren't paying close attention to the details of Who Said What, or Which Person Did That. Instead it's like the memory takes root as a moment, and that's all that remains after time passes.
So I guess in that respect it's not so much a false memory all together, but just false bits and pieces of info.
I think this happens far more than people account for. For example, if you constantly hang out with the same friend group, pretty soon experiences are going to blend together, and you'll assume all of your friends were someplace with you a month ago, when in actuality only half of them were, and yet they all believe they were there too.
I think it just has to do with not actively thinking about the memory being true, and as a result just assuming it was true because it sounds like something that would be true for that person.