Deconstructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime: Commentary on Shaw and Porter (2015)

Abstract

For 20 years, scientists have created a range of false autobiographical memories using the “Lost in the mall” paradigm. Recently Shaw and Porter (2015) suggested to adults that, as adolescents, they had committed a crime resulting in a brush with police. Their finding that 70% constructed rich false memories” is markedly outside the central tendency of the literature, so we considered a counter explanation for Shaw and Porter's results: They failed to distinguish between subjects who appeared to remember (false memories) versus believe the suggestion (false beliefs). We used three different approaches to recode their data. Using Shaw and Porter's approach, we replicated their 70%. Using alternative approaches that distinguish between false beliefs and memories, we found 26-30% of subjects met the criteria for false memories. Moreover, we showed that laypeople’s understanding of remembering better aligns with the alternative coding approaches than with Shaw and Porter’s.