Question

What are some factors that can make false memories more likely to occur? Do people with certain traits have a higher propensity to have false memories?

Answer 1

The factors that can make false memories more likely to occur are:

• Inaccurate perception: Sometimes the situational factors while witnessing an event may lead to inaccurate perception. For example- A individual witnessing an accident may not perceive it completely due to the distance or the speed at which the accident happened but still the individual may claim to remember each and every detail of the accident.
• Inferences: False memories occurs due to the inferences that we make during an inaccurate perception of event. We mostly derive our on inferences based upon our assumptions and believe it to be our accurate memories.
• Interference: Our original memories are interfered by lasted events causes false memories. For example- When we interchange names of our old school teachers with our recent new college teachers. We may remember the faces of our old school teachers but we replace their names with the newer recent teachers.
• Similarities: When events that we experience have similarities false memories occurs. For example- We may replace the original words that was spoken to us during a conversation with more similar meaning words and tend to remember those words than the original words.
• Misattributions of familiarity: We tend to form false memories with those events, people or things whom we feel we have a familiarity.
• Suggestibility: When we leaded during a conversation by suggestions we tend to form false memories.

Research suggest that people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression have higher propensity to have false memories because of their depressive moods and reasons to form for their melancholy.