I have been called an authority on the malleability of memory. ... I warn those involved in legal proceedings that memory is malleable, that it can be written over, that it is like a vast blackboard onto which we can write and erase infinitely.
Psychologists
Elizabeth Loftus
U.S. cognitive psychologist (b.1944). Her 1974 car-crash study showed verb choice can rewrite memory, founding the science of eyewitness reliability. She has testified in 300+ trials and led recovered-memory critique.
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Elizabeth Loftus's Other Quotes
Memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing.
These results are consistent with the view that the questions asked subsequent to an event can cause a reconstruction in one's memory of that event.
Memory is a bit like a Wikipedia page. You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.
Just because someone tells you something with a lot of confidence and detail and emotion, it doesn't mean it really happened.
Related Quotes
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.
-- Steven Pinker
Memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing.
-- Elizabeth Loftus