Alexandra Stewart

How Reliable are our Memories? I wonder how reliable are our memories? This is interesting to me because many times I forget if I already told somebody this, if it was reality or a dream, and if something actually happened or am I making it up. I know that memory loss is common among people too so I think this is a topic that a lot of people can relate to. I think that our memories aren’t very reliable because I’ve heard that people have lied to themselves about what really happened so they started to believe it, but I don’t know anything about this topic. Many tests have been done about memory distortion and have found out that is it now possible to plant a false memory in someone, there can be long term effects on their behavior and there was even a lawsuit around it. In one test the people were told that there was news footage of the plane crash of United 93 in Pennsylvania but there was never any footage. When they had been asked if they had seen the footage 29 percent replied saying they had. In another study they had suggested to the subjects that they had become sick from eating egg salad as a child, a small portion of the participants thought this was true and avoided egg salad at least four months after the experiment. In another experiment they photoshopped a photo with them in it as a child and were able to convince some of them they had been in a hot air balloon or been lost at the mall. In the lawsuit I talked