False Memories: Manipulation Of Eyewitness Testimony

Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and law at the University of California, Irvine, is most well-known for her work in dealing with criminal law, where she shows that it is possible for eyewitness testimony to be manipulated. A prime example of this is the case Loftus worked on that focuses on the man at hand, Steve Titus. Titus was 31 years old as a restaurant manager, about to be married. One night, Titus and his fiancé went out to dinner, and on the way back were stopped by a police officer. The police officer said that Titus himself as well as the car he was driving showed resemblance of a rapist who had raped a female hitchhiker earlier that evening. Following this, the police took Titus’ picture and put it in the lineup of men who resembled the rapist and after showing the victim the photos of all the men, the victim said that Titus was the closest resembling the rapist. This led to Titus being on trial in February of 1981 in which the victim got up on the stand and proclaimed that Steve Titus was absolutely the one who raped her. Titus was convicted of first-degree rape on March 4th, 1981 despite him having a substantial amount of evidence to prove that he was not guilty. Months following this, a private investigation was going on to find evidence that was to prove Titus innocent and it was, on June 8th, 1981 the charge against Titus was dismissed on the basis of evidence turned up revealing who the real rapist was. Titus was livid, filing a lawsuit against the Port police for his suffering. Titus wanted to know how could the victim go from, “this this the closest resembling” to, “I’m absolutely positive that’s the guy”? Elizabeth Loftus was asked to do research over this case because she’s a psychological scientist along with having an expertise in memory.

Loftus wanted to dive deeper into this with a lab study known as the “Lost In The Mall” study. In 1995, Loftus picked 24 participants who were told 4 stories of what the participants recalled in their childhood between the ages of 4-6 years of age. Three of the stories were true, while one of them were false. In order to get the true stories, Loftus sent researchers to talk to the participants’ relatives to find out what really happened. These events were picked out due to them being not emotionally difficult or traumatic to recall. The relatives were also asked to give another story that might’ve happened, but really didn’t. In the family member’s cases of false memory, they made a false memory of getting lost in a shopping mall and provided insight to the details of the mall such as the location and the name of the mall that were false. Following this, the participants were interviewed and reminded of the four stories that they recalled from their childhood. Then the participants were asked to talk about what all they remembered from those memories. Following this, the same process was done a week later, giving the researchers enough data to rate the clarity of these memories. Of the 24 members of the study, 5 of them falsely recalled the made up ‘lost in the mall’ story as a memory that they thought had really happened, despite the participants finding the implanted memory much less clear. Studies much like these in which a false memory is implanted into the participants’ memories should be deemed unethical and not appropriate due to the fact that these memories can be anywhere from small childhood events to traumatic events that could be in the court of law such as the case of Steve Titus, being wrongly convicted despite the amount of evidence he had to support his innocence. Events such as these are considered life changing, and in the case of Steve Titus, he lost everything from his fiancé, his job, as well as his finances. The main ethical challenge that’s facing this trauma research is how it can be carried into our justice systems, which is where the line needs to be drawn. It may seem harmless at first, but false memories can be life changing in the eyes of those who are innocent yet wrongly convicted of a crime that they weren’t even responsible for.

The main factor that plays into these false memories is what psychologist call “repression” which in terms of psychoanalytic theory, is harmful or stressful memories or thoughts are essentially pushed back to the unconscious mind, which is why victims of such traumatic experiences such as sexual assault. Psychologist want to research deeper into repression because of its effects that it has on the human body such as the rise of anxiety along with neurotic symptoms that lets researchers study things like the repressed wishes in dreams, as well as the unconscious mind.

Although the research of repression and how it truly effects us as humans remains a little bit of a mystery for most psychologist in how it can be seen as an access to see how our minds work on an unconscious level despite not having much evidence, I personally believe that it should not be used in terms of implanting such false memories because these false memories can lead to as I said earlier, our justice system, which further leads onto more corruption in our police force along with the court system.