Lawyers and police have often averred that “eye witness” accounts are not very reliable. Many people claimed to have seen a specific incident during the 7/7 bombings in London which did not happen. The fact that more than one person “saw” it does not alter the fact that it did not happen, only expose a ‘prejudice’ held by those who claimed to have seen it.

The best-known study on eyewitness testimony was by Loftus (an American psychologist) in 1979. This experiment has been repeated many times, and you can try it.

Show a video of an incident,(car accident, robbery etc) to a group, then divide your ‘witnesses’ into three segments. Witness One Group is asked open questions, such as ‘What colour was the car?’

Witness Two Group is asked more closed questions, such as ‘Was the car blue or brown?’

Witness Three Group is asked closed and leading questions, such as “The car you saw was blue, yes?”

Even when shown the video again, after being questioned, those in the “Witness Three” category will say they could have sworn the car was blue. If asked again three months later, they will repeat the car was blue.

Each of us have many positive false memories. Sometimes when we are young, we recall seeing xyz but it might have been provoked by something said to us, as in “Witness Three” above.

As we get older we put a “spin” on things using later events and emotions to colour earlier ones.

The ‘respinning’ may become cemented in our minds as having happened in the way we “remember”. When there are conflicting views as to what happened, if the memory is without stress, without the “layering” of emotional context the truth can be got at. If not, then the “memory” is “fit” into the current “context”.

For example, Barbara recalls her sister Leah “beating the crap out of her”. Leah recalls slapping her. Unless Barbara calls one slap a beating, then one of them is wrong. If after it is proven that parents and grandparents were present in a fairly small apartment. If Barbara reassesses her memory, she might be led to uncover negative feelings towards her sister. If Barbara doesn’t do this,  she will never understand her feelings, or uncover why she so intensely dislikes her sister and needs to see herself as a ‘victim’.

Once one becomes aware that feelings, prejudices, beliefs effect memory, one becomes a bit cautious in being too certain about what they remember contra what they project. It is not just the “blue car” it is also the fact that if Barbara didn’t despise her sister she would not have turned a slap into a beating.

Memory does “play tricks” on you. You might be remembering something that never happened.