Julia Shaw

Well, it's not just representativeness.

It's also that we shouldn't take individual studies in that way.

Like, I'm not saying that 70% of people always have false memories either.

Like, it just means in this one study, more people than not develop these complex memories.

It's mostly, I think, a good thing that we can shape it.

I think the fact that...

memory can be false in the way that I do it in my study is it's a result of the fact that our minds are made to creatively recombine information to solve problems in the present.

And so even the fact that we have this gist memory, it's because we're optimizing data processing.

We're basically saying these are the most important things from these events and the other details are irrelevant.

Don't remember that.

Gone.

And now I'm going to work with that to try and solve what life comes up with.

And the ability to be creative and intelligent relies on our ability to take memories from the past and pieces of them and to creatively recombine them.

And so that's what false memories are, except that that then can look bad if you're trying to remember something specific.

And so in my research, I used leading and suggestive questions like close your eyes, picture the event that I'm trying to implant.

So I was implanting, for example, you're 14 years old.

You were in contact with the police.

The police called your parents.

and you assaulted someone with a weapon.

And then the question is, what do you remember?