|
A key, researchers said, is to add elements of touch, taste, sound and smell to the story.
In the Bugs Bunny study, Loftus talked with subjects about their childhoods and asked not only whether they saw someone dressed up as the character, but also whether they hugged his furry body and stroked his velvety ears. In subsequent interviews, 36 percent of the subjects recalled the cartoon rabbit.
In another study, Loftus suggested frog-kissing incidents that 15 percent of the group later recalled.
"It is sensory details that people use to distinguish their memories," said Loftus, who has conducted false memories experiments on 20,000 subjects over 25 years. "If you imbue the story with them, you'll disrupt this memory process. It's almost a recipe to get people to remember things that aren't true."
|
|
