What Schacter called ‘the sin of suggestibility’, has particular relevance in the law. Cases often rely heavily on evidence obtained from victims and witnesses, but we remember events less than reliably. American psychologist Elizabeth Loftus showed in experiments that leading questions could influence recollections. In one experiment participants were told about a crash involving two cars, and then asked questions such as what color was the car that hit them, and what color was the car they hit? They estimated the speeds of both cars very differently depending on which version of the story they had heard.
Loftus also demonstrated how easy it was to implant false memories, especially with a traumatic experience. More worryingly, he showed that it is possible for people to create memories of things that never occurred, in experiments where participants were told they had been lost in an unfamiliar place as children. This kind of “false memory” undermines the reliability of witness evidence and casts doubt on the accuracy of Freud’s theories about the effects of suppressed memories.
