Alumni Speaker: The Fiction of Memory
Event Details
03:00PM - 05:30PM
Map address
Join Stanford alumni for a special faculty speaker event with Elizabeth Loftus, MA '67, PhD, '70, faculty at University of California - Irvine. You won't want to miss this fascinating conversation on the reality of memories.
Check-in and light refreshments start at 3:00 PM.
Talk starts at 3:30 PM, followed by Q&A.
Can we tell true memories from false ones? Dr. Elizabeth Loftus will share findings from several of her studies in which she has created false memories from actual events. She will discuss how an individual can be absolutely certain of a memory, only to later learn that it may be a "rich false memory". In her research, she has found that people can be led to believe that they did things that would have been rather implausible. False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people, affecting later thoughts, intentions, and behaviors. If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about “regulating” this mind technology? And what do these pseudo memories say about the nature of memory itself?
Loftus’s memory research has led to her being called as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases, including the Hillside Strangler, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and litigation involving Michael Jackson.
