False Memories and Political Disinformation

When fake is taken for real, what is real becomes fake. -- Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber)

Recall of memories is currently believed to involve reconstruction of past events, images or sensations instead of recall of something akin to a photograph or an audio or video recording. The reconstruction process is error prone and susceptible to false suggestions that can generate memories that are at least partly false. Sometimes even a vivid memory is completely false. Even without false suggestions, memories drift over time.

Since memory reconstruction is an unconscious process, we are unaware of errors a recalled memory might contain or where the errors might have come from. People who believe in a false memory honestly believe their recall is true. They are simply unaware that their minds have distorted what was real into something that is not real.

Methods to create false memories are well-known to science. For various reasons, the data on memory implantation must be interpreted with caution. This area of science has moved past its infancy into adolescence. Researchers are coming to understand the factors that lead to variability in outcomes from various memory implant protocols. This paves the way for more confidence in protocols to induce false memories and an understanding if the biology is the same in all scenarios or if there are multiple pathways to false memory or personal factors that correlate with an increased or decreased propensity to create false memories.

False memories can arise in various ways. One is by forming an intention to do something and then not doing it. Later, the person can come to believe that they actually did what the intended but did not do. This is fairly common. One commentator observed: “it is not surprising at all that intending to complete a task also can create a false memory. Our brains do not appear to have a clean functional separation between imagination and memory.”

The misinformation method

The misinformation method to induce false memories relies on exposure to misinformation about a past event that a person witnessed. This is one of the most common methods researchers to induce false memories. The protocol is simple. People experience an event, then later they receive misinformation about it, and after that they are tested for their memory of the event.

Some research asks if people vary in their susceptibility to misinformation. Traits such as intelligence, personality, and traits such as anxiety or depression have been examined and some tentative hypotheses on cause and effect have been made. For example, a 2010 meta-analysis observed:

“Results revealed sizable and systematic individual differences in false memory arising from exposure to misinformation. False memories were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of intelligence ...., perception ...., memory ...., and face judgement. These findings suggest that people with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities might be more susceptible to the misinformation effect.”

Motivated false memory 

A 2012 paper (Feb. 2020 revision available here) indicates that memory can be distorted by what the researchers call motivated memory.[1] For fans of the brain it is probably not surprising that people have a tendency to distort memory in their own favor:

“We observe systematic incidences of false memory in favor of positive events and positive amnesia in forgetting past negative events. Both positive delusion and positive confabulation significantly relate to present bias, but this is not the case for positive amnesia. ..... we demonstrate that positive false memory, rather than selective amnesia, serves to enhance confidence in one’s future self in equilibrium, thereby accounting for our experimental findings. ..... The presence of motivated false memory has pervasive
real-life relevance, e.g., in enhancing one's self-image to boost labor market value,
building an academic dream to motivate graduate students and junior professors, and inducing collective delusion in organizations to enhance corporate performance. ..... To varying degrees, people process information in a motivated direction to reach conclusions they favor, including forgetfulness and false memory encompassing memory illusion and delusion.”

Politics and disinformation

Disinformation is false information, fake conspiracies, defamation and the like, that is intended to confuse, mislead and/or deflect negative attention among opposition, competitors, the media and/or the public. It is routinely used to distort both unconscious and conscious reasoning and beliefs in the direction the liar and deceiver wants thinking to go. It can also be used to create false memories. False memory creation is probably another aspect of why disinformation (dark free speech or propaganda) that is repeated is so powerful with so many people. It isn't just thinking that is unconsciously poisoned. It also unconsciously poisons memories.

It is the unconscious, toxic nature of disinformation that renders it so immoral or even evil if the speaker or source intends malice. A significant portion of the American people have been poisoned by decades of political disinformation. Over time those minds have sincerely and honestly come to believe that many things that are fake, lies and/or illusions are real, while what is real is fake.

So far, no one that I am aware of makes has an easy answer for how to deal with this poisonous mind plague. Some of the science directed to this problem has helpful suggestions, but the fact remains that the torrent of disinformation backed by billions of dollars worth of advertising will not stop. Apparently, the political, economic and Christian religious upsides far outweigh the downsides. Society has been damaged to the point that this plague has significantly overwhelmed our defenses.


Footnote:
1. Motivated memory appears to be a process that is at least outwardly similar to motivated reasoning.

Wikipedia: Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon that arises from emotionally-biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the "tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe". It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary.