False memories: Can You Remember Something That Never Happened?

How reliable are your memories? And could you be remembering something that never actually happened?

In this episode of Circuit Breaker: Rewiring Your Decisions, we explore the Lost in the Mall Study — a fascinating experiment by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus investigating the malleability of human memory. The research raises some unsettling questions about how our recollections are formed, how easily they can be influenced, and whether we can always trust what we remember.

But if our memories aren’t as reliable as we think, what does that mean for the way we understand our own past? Discover why confidence doesn’t necessarily mean accuracy, and how the mind’s ability to reconstruct memories can blur the line between what really happened and what we believe happened.

Studies and links

• The Formation of False Memories | Elizabeth F. Loftus and Jacqueline Pickrell
• False Memory in Psychology | Simply Psychology