Bernstein, D. M., Laney, C., & Morris, E. K. (2005). False memories about food can lead to food
avoidance. Social Cognition, 23, 11-34.
Introduction:
Several previous studies have shown
that it is possible to implant false memories that participants find convincing
and in which they add to the implanted memory. This can be seen in such studies
involving implantation such as being lost in a shopping mall, a false balloon
ride, or ritualistic satanic child abuse. One study has shown that rich false
memories can have lasting effects as people who misremember being attacked by a
small dog were later repulsed by the idea of having one as a pet. The present
study tries to find if suggestion of getting ill after eating certain types of
food will cause avoidance of those foods.
Experiment 1:
Two hundred thirty-seven
undergraduates were run in small groups for course credit. They were first
asked to fill out a Food Preferences Questionnaire where they rated 62
different foods in terms of how much they liked the food. After a 10 minute
filler task, participants were told that they either had a bad experience with
hard boiled eggs, dill pickles, or not told anything at all (control). All the
participants were also told that they disliked spinach, enjoyed fried foods,
and enjoyed chocolate almonds. They were also told this probably happened when
they were 3 or 4, and the description seemed personalized to the participant.
The participants then had to elaborate on enjoying chocolate and getting sick
from the critical item to make sure the feedback was processed. After this they
filled out a 24 Food History Inventory with the critical items added. Finally, participants filled out a
questionnaire about an imaginary party in which they had to list how likely it
would be of them eating certain types of food again with the critical items
embedded.
Results show that participants who were told falsely that they had gotten ill while eating a pickle indicated that they were less likely to eat a pickle at a party. However, this finding was a trend and not significant. It was significant that the false illness after eating the pickle condition did increase the confidence that the event had occurred compared to the control group and the egg group. This can be seen in table 1.
Experiment 2:
Experiment 2 sought to correct the problem that the party behavior scores included both those people who believed the feedback and those who didn’t. This was done by have the experiment span across a week. At the first session the 180 participants filled out the FHI, which was the same as in experiment 1. They also filled out some personality questionnaires to disguise the purpose of the experiment. After a week, the participants returned and were given the false feedback which was the same categories as in experiment 1. Again, they were asked two questions about the chocolate and the critical items to make sure that the feedback was processed. The participants filled out the post FHI. Following the FHI was the Food Preferences questionnaire which was used as a dependent measure. Lastly, the participants filled out a “Memory or Belief?” questionnaire. This was designed to find out if the participants actually believed the feed back and to give descriptions of why they believed/didn’t believe or their memory of the event.
Table 2 shows that false feedback the in the corresponding condition increased the rating that the event happened from the pre test to the post test. As expected, the feedback for the pickle condition increased the ratings for the pickle event but didn’t increase ratings for the egg event. Similar findings occurred with the egg condition. By seeing who increased in ratings and who marked they believed the feedback, the experimenters found that the pickle condition had 22 believers and the egg condition had 28 believers. Believers gave lower ratings to the critical items than people were not exposed to the item-specific conditions (egg condition was only marginally significant). There were also ripple items on the Party Behavior which received a lower rating when the item specific false feedback was given. This shows that the avoidance can be transferred to similar food items. Believers did not avoid the filler foods more than the non-believers. Four of the 22 pickle believers remember the event with details, and 5 of the 28 egg believers remembered the event. The authors note that they cannot verify that the memories did or did not happen.
Discussion:
Recapping shows that false feedback led to food avoidance when comparing pretest and posttest FHIs and the Party Behavior questionnaire. The authors suggest this might be because of the authority of the computer analysis that might be convincing the participants that a event most likely occurred. The participants could have also imagined the event during the questionnaire designed to incorporate the feedback and imagined was the childhood event was affecting them as an adult. The feedback could have also just increased the familiarity of the critical event and so when the critical event was seen on the later tests, it seemed more like a memory. The main confound is that the experimenters cannot verify the reports received as being true or false. However, most of the believers indicated they had a belief that the event happened instead of a memory. If this is considered a “flipped memory” then the false feedback did change the believers’ opinions. Other limitations are demand characteristics where the participants may have figured out the purpose of the experiment because of the multiple references to the critical items. However, during debriefing, almost no one said that they knew the purpose of the experiment.
Important Legal
Disclaimer: The preceding are articles we read together in the Lampinen Lab Spring 2006 false memory reading group. By
clicking on the button next to the article you can see the summary of that
article. The summary was prepared by the student presenting that article and it
is of course the case that the views expressed in the summary do not
necessarily represent the views of the reading group as a whole, Dr. Lampinen, the Lampinen Lab,
Hugo's, the University of Arkansas, the Razorback Football or Basketball teams
(although we're not sure about cross country), people living down the street
from us, Bob Dylan, Jack Fate, our extended families, or anyone else for that
matter except for the student who wrote the summary (and they don't necessarily
believe what they wrote either).