Study: False Memories of Fabricated Political Events


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https://papers.ssrn....ract_id=2201941

In the largest false memory study to date, 5,269 participants were asked about their memories for three true and one of five fabricated political events. Each fabricated event was accompanied by a photographic image purportedly depicting that event. Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news. Political orientation appeared to influence the formation of false memories, with conservatives more likely to falsely remember seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran, and liberals more likely to remember George W. Bush vacationing with a baseball celebrity during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. A follow-up study supported the explanation that events are more easily implanted in memory when they are congruent with a person's preexisting attitudes and evaluations, in part because attitude-congruent false events promote feelings of recognition and familiarity, which in turn interfere with source attributions.

I wasn't sure what forum section to put this in, at the base it fits into science discussion but can easily fall into politics or conspiracies discussions.

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https://papers.ssrn....ract_id=2201941

I wasn't sure what forum section to put this in, at the base it fits into science discussion but can easily fall into politics or conspiracies discussions.

All I could think about was how wonderful it is to now have fast access to information at your fingertips. Wherever, Whenever.

Debates on objective information from sometimes feeble, forgetful, fictitious memory minds(mine included) are a lot easier to resolve.

You guys know what I mean?

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All I could think about was how wonderful it is to now have fast access to information at your fingertips. Wherever, Whenever.

Debates on objective information from sometimes feeble, forgetful, fictitious memory minds(mine included) are a lot easier to resolve.

You guys know what I mean?

Unless the facts that you're referring to are themselves fabricated. It's politics. bull**** and politics go hand in hand.

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I can understand how this happens as most people don't do any of their own research. It's also why eye witnesses are a very unreliable source in a court of law.

As for politics itself, it's not confined to just politicians and the government. It's what happens everyday in normal discourse.

From wikipedia

Politics (from Greek politikos "of, for, or relating to citizens") is the art or science of influencing people on a civic, or individual level, when there are more than 2 people involved.
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Unless the facts that you're referring to are themselves fabricated. It's politics. bull**** and politics go hand in hand.

Always. You can tell when a politician is lying because their lips are moving.

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This is why I find political affiliations amusing. These people get blinded by hatred of the opposition and will accept any made up story fed to them. Not sure why we needed the study when we have Fox News. :laugh:

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This is a good study, certainly explains why so many people are wrong even when they think thy are right. It's a human thing, imagine a super race who were so effecient because they never made any mistakes

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This is why I find political affiliations amusing. These people get blinded by hatred of the opposition and will accept any made up story fed to them. Not sure why we needed the study when we have Fox News. :laugh:

And yet here you are doing exactly what the article says, you have a fake negative association for Fox News and you have no problem stating it as a fact, when it isn't

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Although an interesting study, psychologists have been aware of this phenomena for decades. In this study it was only exhibited by about half of those studied, but in everyday life everyone is effected to varying degrees and in different ways/scenarios. A common example is of a negative and a positive person. A positive (or more fearless) person who believes that the world is generally good will see more good things happening around them than bad things. Alternatively, a negative (or more fearful) person who believes that the world is generally bad will see more bad things happening around them than good things. In this way we reinforce our world views by filtering our experiences in reality to fit what we believe (or want to believe).

Always. You can tell when a politician is lying because their lips are moving.

Only bad politicians lie. Most of them tell you the truth. At least the bits and pieces of the truth that they want you to know, and with a context (or a lack of context) that will influence your understanding of that truth to make it seem that their position is the better one, or the only correct one. This is much more convincing and much more subtle than telling an outright lie.

Knowing the issues is important, but maybe not quite as important as knowing what actions politicians and political parties have taken in their short term and long term pasts.

Machiavelli?s truth is human truth. This means he was not fooled by what people wrote or spoke. He looked at them in action. When you do this intently, you soon discover their words and their behaviour are very different. But the truth is only discovered by watching them acting. Then they reveal themselves in their truth.

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And yet here you are doing exactly what the article says, you have a fake negative association for Fox News and you have no problem stating it as a fact, when it isn't

In all fairness Fox has a history of relaying misleading, distorted and false information. Not saying other news organizations don't but Fox is hardly innocent.

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