ABSTRACT
Memories of a favorite childhood pet can give people warm feelings later in life. Memories of getting horrible food poisoning after eating leftover pizza from the fridge can make people avoid pizza for the rest of their lives. Memories of committing a wrong against a friend can lead to lifelong feelings of guilt. Being able to differentiate between memories for events that truly happened and false memories would be highly beneficial, especially for the justice system. In the initial published studies of false memory consequences, our research group gave subjects false memories for one of two food-related childhood events, getting sick after eating either dill pickles or hard-boiled eggs. The studies described so far use as a dependent measure intention to eat, reported by subjects via paper and pencil tasks, rather than actual eating behavior. The researchers found that false beliefs led to similar outcomes to those produced by true beliefs.
