If one individual claims to have no recollection of an event while another individual can recall it in a detailed and clear manner it becomes difficult to ascertain whose account should be trusted. Because an individual can recall an event with considerable clarity and detail, their account should not necessarily be trusted over the claim of another individual to have no recollection whatsoever of the event. This statement can be supported by the results of research studies in the field of memory which provide evidence to support the existence of false memories and the ease with which these false memories can be convincingly created.

A study by Loftus and Pickrell, ‘The Formation of False Memories’ (1995) provides detailed evidence in support of the existence of false memories. The participants were informed that they were participating in a study of their ability to recall childhood memories. Participants were students at the University of Washington, three males and twenty one females between the ages of eighteen and fifty-three. Each subject was then paired with a close family member who was well-informed about the childhood experiences of the participant. Participants received a booklet containing four short stories about the three true events and one false event from the participant’s childhood. There was sufficient room in the booklet under each story for the participant to record their own memory of the event. The information regarding the three true events was collected from the family member of the participant, as were details which could help the plausibility of the false event. All the false events followed the same basic outline: the participant was lost in a department store or mall while aged about five, was crying, was aided by an elderly woman and was finally reunited with their family after an extended period of time. The family member was also asked to verify whether or not a similar incident had in fact occurred in the participant’s childhood; only participants who had never endured a similar experience were involved in the experiment. (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995).

Having completed the booklet, participants were scheduled for two sperate interviews approximately one-two weeks after completing the booklet and another one-two weeks after that. At each interview participants were reminded about the details of the four events and were asked to recall any memory they had of each event. After this the participants were asked to rate the clarity of the memories on a scale of one to ten, one being not clear at all and ten being extremely clear. Participants were then asked to rate their confidence in being able to recall more about the event if they had more time to think about it. The second interview was the same as the first, however after completion subjects were de-briefed about the true intent of the study, and the planting of the false event. Participants were then asked to guess which event may have been the false one. (Loftus et al., 1995).

The twenty four participants were requested to remember seventy-two true events, and were able to recall something about forty-nine of the seventy-two, meaning that 68% of all true events were remembered. Six of the twenty-four participants, 25%, claimed to remember something about the false event. The remaining 75% of participants uniformly claimed not to remember the false event at all in both interviews. The mean clarity ratings for the individuals who claimed to remember the false event were 6.3 for both interviews. When asked at the end of the de-briefing which memory they thought was false, nineteen of the subjects correctly identified the false memory while the remaining five identified one of the true memories as being false. Majority of participants who correctly identified the false memory did so through elimination, not through failing in their belief that the memory was true. (Loftus et al., 1995).

A study by Hyman and Pentland (1996) further addressed the issue of false memories, this time attempting to create a more obscure memory then simply a memory of ‘getting lost’. In this study the participants were 226 Western Washington University students from introductory psychology class. The participant’s parents were mailed a questionnaire about the participant’s childhood events. Sixty-five participants adequately completed the experiment, twenty males and forty-five females; thirty-two in the guided imagery condition and thirty-three in the controlled condition. (Hyman & Pentland, 1996).

Upon return of the completed parental questionaries with at least two event descriptions the students were requested to take part in three interviews regarding the collected data. Once again participants were told that the aim of the experiment was to investigate memories of childhood experiences. The interviews were scheduled within one week, one day apart. Interviewers asked the participants to describe between two and five true events from the parental questionnaire and one false event. The false event was:
‘When you were 5 you were at a wedding reception of some friends of the family and you were running around with some other kids, when you bumped into the punch bowl and spilled the punch bowl on the parents of the bride’(Hyman et al., 1996, p. 105).
In order to eliminate the possibility that a similar event had actually happened to one of the participants the parental questionnaire asked about any childhood experiences at weddings. In the first interview the participants were given several cues relating to each event, including the false event. They were then asked if they recalled any event that related to these cues and were encouraged to provide details if they could. When participants in the imagery condition could not recall the event they were asked to imagine the event under the guise that this would help them remember it. The participants were then questioned about this mental image. When participants in the control condition could not recall an event they were asked to sit and think about the event for a period of forty-five to sixty seconds. They were then questioned about anything new that they remembered. The second and third interviews were conducted in the same manner and at the end of the third interview prior to debriefing the participants were asked how frequently they had thought or talked about the event previously. They were also questioned about the emotionality of the memory, the direction of the experienced emotions, the clarity of their mental image, and their confidence in the memory. (Hyman et al., 1996).

Over 75% of the true events were recalled in the first interview. In the control condition seven of the twenty four previously unrecalled events were eventually remembered, while the participants in the imagery condition eventually recalled fifteen of the twenty three previously unrecalled events. In the control group for the false memory 9.1% or participants were categorised as having a ‘clear false memory’, 3% a ‘partial false memory, 27.3% ‘no memory but trying to recover’ and 60.6% ‘no memory. This compared to the imagery group of whom 25% were categorised as having a ‘clear false memory’, 12.5% a ‘partial false memory’, 62.5% ‘no memory but trying to recover’ and 0% ‘no memory’. It can therefore be established that firstly, that either clear of partial false memories can quite easily be formed while visual suggestion further enhances the effective development of false memories. (Hyman et al., 1996).

In light of the evidence illustrated from these two research studies, it is negligent to assume that remembering an experience with clarity and detail is grounds for assuming it definitely occurred. In Loftus and Pickrell’s study, 25% of participants reported remembering an event which never occurred with a degree of detail (Loftus et al., 1995). This is a large enough portion of participants to support the idea that with very limited prompting an individual can be convinced of the validity of a false memory. One participant even claimed to remember specific details of the event after she had been told it was a false event, supporting the idea that the participant harboured a genuine and not merely an illusionary belief in the memory of the false event (Loftus et al., 1995). The study was well contained to minimise confounding variables, and the measures were adequate to illustrate the results. Suggestibility could also account for the production of such a false memory, false memories can often be attributed to suggestion or misleading questions (Schacter, 1999). This could distort the memory or even create a new, false memory through irrelevant or misleading questions as well as misleading post event information (Schacter, 1999). The study by Hyman and Pentland echoes the findings of Loftus and Pickrell’s study while eliminating the problem of commonness in the ‘getting lost’ false event by replacing with the more obscure ‘punch’ story. This study also looked at the link between imagining an event and creating a false memory of the event, with participants in the imagery condition reporting higher levels of recollection for the false event then participants in the control condition; 37.5%:12.1% (Hyman et al., 1996). However a considerable percentage of participants in both studies did report the existence of a memory regarding the false event. More participants from the imagery group were categorised as having a clear false memory then were classed as having only a partial false memory, 25%:12.5%, further proving that even detailed recollections can be false (Hyman et al., 1996). Both studies were executed well and a great variety of participants ensures that the data gathered is socially applicable. Also, validity of the studies is increased by their concurring nature. The evidence provided in these studies supports the idea that a memory can be falsely created while maintaining a degree of detail, while Hyman’s study also provides a plausible catalyst for false memory production in the form of mental imagery.

Memory can be manipulated and even created. Studies have shown that participants can confidently recall specific details about events that, while suggested to them, have never actually occurred. Similarly when asked to imagine an event having occurred, participants found it easier to create a viable false memory of the event. Suggestibility has been found at present to be the main means of creating false memories, and findings of both studies suggest that if the occurrence of an event is suggested to an individual there is a considerable chance that the individual will develop a false and possibly detailed memory of the event independent from the event itself, which never actually occurred. Several different types of events have been tested to avoid any bias, and all have produced similar results. In light of such evidence it is not plausible nor is it accurate to trust the account of an individual who claims to vividly remember an event in detail over the claim of another individual to have no recollection of the event whatsoever. Regardless of vividness and detail, without empirical evidence to support the claim of the individual it is impossible to say that the event most certainly occurred and is not simply a false memory born of continuous suggestibility and false validation.