False memory really sounds like it should be the title of a drone/doom/post metal song. A guest post by Shawaz Imam.

False memory is the recollection of an event, or the details of an event, that did not occur. Just about everyone in the world has the potential to fall victim to false memory. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus suggests that rather than immediately labeling someone as a liar, it may be more productive to point out the fallibility of memory. Explaining that memory is not nearly as consistently accurate as we think it is may help avert some significant and potentially devastating arguments.
            Memory is a constructive process. When we encode memories, every single detail of the memory is not accurately recorded. Thus, our minds “fill in the blanks” using various processes, all of which typically work quite well, but occasionally lead to the creation of partially or totally false memories – memories of events or details of events that did not occur. Source-monitoring error, the misinformation effect, and confabulation are a few distinct forms of memory errors.

Source-monitoring error is essentially exactly what it sounds like. We attribute the source of a memory to a specific recollected experience, despite that experience not truly being the source of the memory. Source monitoring errors occur when the normal encoding process is disrupted, or when the source-monitoring process is disrupted. Depression, high stress levels, and brain damage to relevant areas are all examples of potentially disruptive factors that can lead to source-monitoring errors. In the false fame experiment, participants are presented with a list of non-famous names. Later, they are presented with the same names as before, in addition to new non-famous and famous names, and they must point out those which are famous. Typically, researchers find that participants will misidentify some of the non-famous names from the initial list as famous names.  This is a source-monitoring error because the participants misidentify the non-famous names as famous, rather than as non-famous names which they read from the initial list.

The misinformation effect is the idea that misleading information presented between the encoding of an event or experience and its subsequent recall can cause impairment in memory. In the original study, researchers Loftus (the same Dr. Elizabeth Loftus I mentioned earlier, in fact), Miller, and Burns showed participants a series of slides, one of which showed a car stopping in front of a yield sign. Afterwards, some participants read a description of what they saying containing misinformation – specifically, that the car stopped in front of a stop sign. Others read accurate descriptions. Those that read inaccurate information were more likely to report seeing a stop sign than those that were not exposed to misinformation.

Confabulation is a memory disturbance. It is the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive oneself or anyone else. As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus believes that many arguments are caused by a misunderstanding of the difference between confabulation and lying. Confabulation is distinct in that there is no awareness of the inaccuracy of whatever it is the individual believes, while lying is the intentional intent to deceive.