False memory is a false or twisted recollection of an experience. These memories can be totally fabricated and imagined. In other situations, they may include content that has been corrupted by tampering with information or other memory disturbances.
Malleable memories of a person often involve the mundane, such as when we second-guess whether the stove is actually off or on. Any of the false memories are not malicious or deliberately damaged. They’re shifts or memory reconstructions that don’t match the actual events.
How are false memories formed or made?
Memories are very complex. Although you might picture a memory as a black or white feature, the fact is that memories are subject to alteration, malleable, and sometimes inaccurate.
Events are transferred from the transient memories of the brain to permanent storage when you sleep. However, the transition is not full. Memory elements may be lost. This is where false memories might begin.
False memory implantation
False memories have been formed in a variety of ways. Each of these affects what changes are made to the memory or how it is stored.
- Suggestions: The inference is a powerful power. You may construct new fake memories with someone else ‘s urging, or with the questions, they pose.
- Misinformation: You can be fed improper or false information about an event and be convinced that it actually occurred. You can make a fresh memory, or you can merge true memories with fake ones.
- Inaccurate perception: Your brain is like a machine, processing what you’re sending it. If you give it the wrong information, it stores the wrong information. Earlier, the holes created by your story can be filled with your own recollections.
- Misassignment: In your brain, you can merge components of various things into identical ones. When you remember the memory, you remember the events that happened. But the timeline is jumbled or confused with an array of events that now form a unique memory in your mind.
- Emotions: Emotions of a moment may have a major effect on how and what is stored as a memory. The latest research shows that negative feelings contribute to more false memories than positive or neutral feelings.
The Potential Impact of False Memories
While we’re all acquainted with memory failures (who haven’t missed a significant bit of information), many people don’t know exactly how widespread false memory actually is. People are remarkably susceptible to suggestion, which can create memories of events and things that really didn’t happen to us.
In other cases, false memories can have significant consequences. Researchers have found that mistaken memories are one of the main triggers of wrongful convictions, typically by false identification of a suspect or wrongful memory during police questioning.
Reference: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-false-memory-2795193
https://www.healthline.com/health/false-memory#false-memory-syndrome
