Julia Shaw

But people go, oh, well, maybe I did repress this.

And then everybody says yes.

Technically, they could say no.

They could say, no, I don't want to do that.

But they go, yeah, of course I want to know.

And so I do this imagination exercise where people close their eyes, very simple, and just imagine what could have happened, basically.

And every time they say a detail, my very first detail ever, I remember this because I was so excited because they've got their eyes closed, right?

And I'm right next to the head of department because they were worried because I was a PhD student that, you know, the ethics of it, the concept of it, it took like years to get the protocol through ethics and to make sure it was safe.

Anyway, I'm grinning as the person with their eyes closed says the most trivial detail.

I remember a blue sky.

And I remember going,

Oh, no, I had no idea.

And so from the trivial details, and I'd always say, yeah, good job, good job.

You know, social reinforcement, little treat, little treat.

And they would remember more and more details, and then they'd get more specific.

And then they'd tell me who it was they allegedly attacked or stole from, where they were.

And those details had to come from them, because I don't know enough about their lives, right?

So this is the other thing with false memories, is it's basing it on lots of real pieces of memories.

Real places, real people, real feelings.

They're just woven together in a way that never happened.