magazine issue 11 2015 / Issue 28

Can you nonbelieve it: What happens when you do not believe in your memories?

• written by Jianqin Wang, Henry Otgaar, Mark Howe, Tom Smeets & Harald Merckelbach
• edited by Lieke Braadbaart

Intriguingly, people who have experienced traumatic events frequently encounter involuntary, intrusive memories of those events (Berntsen, 2010) and often adopt the strategy of denying or undermining their belief in the occurrence of traumatic events (Horowitz, 1986). If undermining belief undermines rates of memory intrusions as well, developing methods to elicit nonbelieved memories would be a meaningful research direction with practical significance. Conversely, if recollection of traumatic events impacts people’s behavioural reactions, not belief, then a logical empirical attempt would be that by deflating the genuineness of PTSD patients’ recollections, PTSD symptoms such as traumatic intrusions would decrease.  But of course, it would touch upon a range of ethical issues: are therapists allowed to manipulate the content and belief-status of trauma memories?

Eyewitnesses

The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitness testimony. Since 1989, there have been thousands of cases where prime suspects were identified and pursued, until DNA testing proved that they were wrongly accused.  72% of these DNA exoneration cases in the US based Innocence Project were victims of mistaken eyewitness identification or false memory (http://www.innocenceproject.org/causes-wrongful-conviction). Among legal professionals, it is assumed that eyewitnesses testify and make identifications based on their “recollections”. Yet, we know that in eyewitnesses too, belief and recollection sometimes are confounded as it is unknown whether eyewitnesses make identifications based on their false beliefs or false memories or both.

There are reasons to believe that belief in the occurrence of an event also plays a part in eyewitness testimony. Memory researchers have often failed to distinguish between memory and belief (Scoboria et al., 2004). Can witnesses discriminate between their memories and the beliefs for the occurrence of their recollections? If eyewitnesses are educated with the distinction between memory and belief, will it lower misidentification rate?  

Research on nonbelieved memories may shed light on how witnesses’ reports may be altered under certain circumstances. For instance, information from one witness could be indirectly passed to another witness through a third party, such as a police officer, who informs the witness about what another witness had said (Luus & Wells, 1994). When the information provided by the police officer contradicts with the witness’s memory, the witness may undermine his belief in his memory and choose to not report certain details. What we need is research on this type of dynamic; how social feedback leads to nonbelieved memories and further influences behavioural output in the legal area.

To conclude, a novel line of research has emerged showing that recollection and belief are distinct constructs sometimes ending up in the creation of nonbelieved memories. Nonbelieved memories have been considered to be a rare and exceptional phenomenon, but this review shows that they can easily be elicited in an experimental setting. The next step is to examine how nonbelieved memories affect our behaviour and whether our belief, recollection, or both determine the way we behave and act. This line of study has important implications for law, therapy and much else.

References

Bernstein, D. M., & Loftus, E. F. (2009). The consequences of false memories for food preferences and choices. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 135–139.