Dr Henry Roediger, a professor at the Washington University Memory Lab, doesn’t think so. “Lots of people remember detailed, but utterly false, memories. In fact, we all have them,” he says. “I have published on what we named ‘the social contagion of memory’ and what others call ‘memory conformity’ – that may be at work here.” Roediger explains that frequently one person’s report of a memory influences another’s, and that false memories can spread in this way. “One person’s memory infects another,” he says.
It is clear that this contagion would only be exacerbated online, where an individual can be influenced by multiple people from all around the world in an instant. The existence of the Shazaam Reddit community, therefore, arguably helps a false memory to spread.
Like accusations that they are misremembering Kazaam however, Shazaam truthers balk at the idea they simply have false memories that have been influenced by one another.
Brains are indeed weird, but it explains a lot about conspiracy theories.
http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2016/12/movie-doesn-t-exist-and-redditors-who-think-it-does
Some of us just aren't caught out by stuff like this because our memories are so awful we can't keep the delusion they're accurate. I feel so safe now.
ReplyDeleteYou know, this article made me think of something I haven't thought of for a while, and that's a children's book. I think I remember a children's book about a hippo in Zanzibar, but I could never find any evidence of it after becoming an adult. I think it might be this same phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteJust take a look at Lie Witness News on Jimmy Kimmel, and you'll see all kinds of people with instant false memories.
ReplyDeleteHumans are SOO unreliable. It's well-known that eyewitness testimony is one of the least reliable pieces of evidence there are.
ReplyDeleteYou mean this movie en.wikipedia.org - Kazaam - Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteKazaam ? That's discussed in the article.:)
ReplyDelete