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Study: Ads Creating False Memories

SwissSkeptic

Critical Thinker
SwissSkeptic
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Dec 6, 2004
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390
I apologize if this has been posted before, I asked about it in the neuromarketing thread and didn't receive a reply:

I recently came across this article which claims that researchers were able to create false memories in subjects through ads. If I understood it correctly, subjects were shown either normal or "vivid" imagery of a fictional Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn. Both groups were split into two more groups, one of which was given popcorn to taste while the other group wasn't. One week later the subjects of both groups who saw the vivid ads were "just as likely" to report having tasted the popcorn. The conclusion seems to be that the vivid ads implanted the false memory of having tasted the popcorn into the minds of the subjects.

I am somewhat skeptical of the whole matter, but I can't read the study (nor am I fully qualified to evaluate it), so I'd be interested to hear some other opinions, maybe from someone who's read the whole study.

I realize that false memories can be created, but the claim of them being created within only one week goes against everything I know about the subject (which is admittedly little). I can see potential confusion with the phrasing of the questions and the fact that they used a fictional version of a well known product. OTOH I don't doubt that we can be tricked into thinking that we had an experience that we really didn't have, especially when it's something as trivial as what we've eaten a week ago.
 
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I am highly skeptical here... I mean we are speaking of memory of having eaten pop corn 1 week before. If it was say, 6 month afterward I would understand, but ehre come on. How many of those pretending they ate the popcorn did it for the bluster, to have something to discuss ? I can't imagine them saying it while REALLY thinking they had eaten popcorn.
 
I have just a couple of questions about these type of memory studies.
First, were the subjects given the followup test in a group or individually? Because normal group pressures could make a lot of the subjects say they'd remembered something when they hadn't.
Second, what was done to make sure that the subjects really did think they remembered something a certain way? Some of them could possibly have been saying what they thought the researchers wanted to hear.

If those two conditions were allowed for, then yes, this is an interesting study.
 
While I don't have any studies to back it up, suggestion has long been a mainstay of the magic as well as the psychic industries.
 
I saw a experiment a few years ago involving Roswell. They also started to see some real false memories in a week
 
sophia8 said:
I have just a couple of questions about these type of memory studies.
First, were the subjects given the followup test in a group or individually? Because normal group pressures could make a lot of the subjects say they'd remembered something when they hadn't.
Second, what was done to make sure that the subjects really did think they remembered something a certain way? Some of them could possibly have been saying what they thought the researchers wanted to hear.

If those two conditions were allowed for, then yes, this is an interesting study.
Click to expand...

First, memory study measures are always done individually, not publicly in groups. Second, if you can wade through the attached article (I couldn't), you may be able to find out if they ruled out demand characteristics. http://www.pi.edu.pk/660165.pdf
 
Jeff Corey said:
First, memory study measures are always done individually, not publicly in groups. Second, if you can wade through the attached article (I couldn't), you may be able to find out if they ruled out demand characteristics. http://www.pi.edu.pk/660165.pdf
Click to expand...

Thank you for linking the article. Skimming through it I don't see them ruling out demand characteristics, but they did account for my concern that subjects might falsely believe that they encountered the fictional brand before due to its similarity to existing brands. Apparently the fact that they used recognizable brands was an integral part of the study.

ETA: They reference two studies that seem to establish the creation of false memories through advertising, so apparently the claim isn't completely new:

Braun-LaTour, Kathryn A., Michael LaTour, Jacqueline E. Pickrell,
and Elizabth F. Loftus (2004), “How and When Advertising
Can Influence Memory for Consumer Experience,” Journal
of Advertising, 33 (4), 7–25.

Lakshmanan, Arun and Shanker H. Krishnan (2009), “How Does
Imagery in Interactive Consumption Lead to False Memory?
A Reconstructive Memory Perspective,” Journal of Consumer
Psychology, 19 (3), 451–62.
 
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SwissSkeptic said:
I realize that false memories can be created, but the claim of them being created within only one week goes against everything I know about the subject (which is admittedly little). I can see potential confusion with the phrasing of the questions and the fact that they used a fictional version of a well known product. OTOH I don't doubt that we can be tricked into thinking that we had an experience that we really didn't have, especially when it's something as trivial as what we've eaten a week ago.
Click to expand...

There are many types of false memories that can be created in less than a week, and some that can be created virtually immediately. That aspect would not surprise me.
 
Elaedith said:
There are many types of false memories that can be created in less than a week, and some that can be created virtually immediately. That aspect would not surprise me.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm making a false distinction in my mind between remembering something that never happened and misremembering something that did happen, but I can't think of any examples where the former happens immediatly. I admit though, I know next to nothing about how the memory works. Could you give me an example?

On a sidenote, I wonder if the subjects already had the false memories during the week between seeing the ads and replying to the survey or if the false memories were only created the moment they were asked if they had tried the popcorn.
 
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SwissSkeptic said:
Maybe I'm making a false distinction in my mind between remembering something that never happened and misremembering something that did happen, but I can't think of any examples where the former happens immediatly. I admit though, I know next to nothing about how the memory works. Could you give me an example?

On a sidenote, I wonder if the subjects already had the false memories during the week between seeing the ads and replying to the survey or if the false memories were only created the moment they were asked if they had tried the popcorn.
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False memories for early childhood experiences that never happened can easily be created with a short time interval, as can false memories for things which never happened within a single experimental session (e.g. having spoken or performed an action which was in fact only imagined, or having seen things which were not seen). I'm not so familiar with research that creates false memories for experiences occurring in adulthood, but prior to the suggestive episode. There is nothing about the way memory works which would make this time interval surprising.
 
I'd be more confident if it weren't something like eating popcorn. That's too much an experience I've already had. Now, if you could do it with a more meaningful experience, like kissing Uma Thurman, that would be impressive.
 
Elaedith said:
False memories for early childhood experiences that never happened can easily be created with a short time interval, as can false memories for things which never happened within a single experimental session (e.g. having spoken or performed an action which was in fact only imagined, or having seen things which were not seen). I'm not so familiar with research that creates false memories for experiences occurring in adulthood, but prior to the suggestive episode. There is nothing about the way memory works which would make this time interval surprising.
Click to expand...

I remember a study where false childhood memories were created in adults (IIRC it was about seeing Bugs Bunny in Disneyland), but there was a large time interval between the remembered event and the survey, so that's not exactly the same situation. I'm more interested in your second claim, as I never heard of any research that showed that. I'm not denying it exists, but all I can think of are studies about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, which are more about misremembering things that happened. And then there's of course this.
 
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Nice article in Smithsonian May 2010 p.39 + titled Making Memories on this very topic.
 
INRM said:
So, at what point does advertising cross the line?
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I assume you mean when does advertising in such a manner become unethical. It doesn't. Even if the findings of the study are correct, there's no reason to believe that false memories can be implanted in unwilling subjects.
 
This is very interesting, but there are two things which make me wonder how much it applies to real life.

1. Someone agreeing to take part in a commercial-watching experiment is probably devoting more attention and effort to taking it in than they would for real ads. It could be more like stage hypnosis than mind control.

2. Sorry Orville, but all popcorn pretty much tastes the same. Also, pretty much everyone actually HAS eaten popcorn, and probably at least once it was popcorn of that same brand, so the real trick here is to convince people that they had previously eaten popcorn out of a slightly different box. "Imagine you are eating popcorn..." Yeah, that's pretty easy. I would be impressed if they implanted a memory of drinking guacamole-flavored soda.
 
SwissSkeptic said:
I remember a study where false childhood memories were created in adults (IIRC it was about seeing Bugs Bunny in Disneyland), but there was a large time interval between the remembered event and the survey, so that's not exactly the same situation. I'm more interested in your second claim, as I never heard of any research that showed that. I'm not denying it exists, but all I can think of are studies about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, which are more about misremembering things that happened. And then there's of course this.
Click to expand...

I assume by short time intervals you meant the time between suggestion and testing the presence of a false memory. The false childhood memory studies used time intervals between suggestion and test varying between 1 day and 1 week, but of course the event falsely remembered is presumed to have taken place a long time ago. I can think of at least two similar now for false memories of events in adulthood (memories for having seen news footage that doesn't exist), but again the imagined event is presumed to have occured some time before.

Many of the eyewitness studies involve false memories for events and objects that were never seen (e.g. falsely remembering broken glass in a crash scene) where the witnessed event occurred only a short time ago. I would not class these as simply distortions of witnessed events. The DRM paradigm can produce false memories for hearing or seeing words within a single session.

Imagination inflation studies for actions typically find false memories for having performed actions only 24 hours before, or sometimes less (but not when the test is given immediately after the imagined action). For example,
http://www.personeel.unimaas.nl/tom.smeets/peters et al. 2007jnmd.pdf
http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy article PDF's/Goff and Roediger 1998.pdf


I would expect a false memory for a familiar taste to be quite easy to create through imagination inflation. I don't see why it would be harder than a false memory for seeing an object, hearing a word, or performing an action. A false memory for something never tasted would be difficult to create because it would be difficult or impossible to imagine.
 
shadron said:
While I don't have any studies to back it up, suggestion has long been a mainstay of the magic as well as the psychic industries.
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Certainly those pretty much rely on creating false memories - I've seen people being interviewed minutes after "readings" and have already created false memories of what happened.
 
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