Have I done it?

October, 2010

Watching another person do something can leave you with the memory of having done it yourself.

I’m not at all sure why the researcher says they were “stunned” by these findings, since it doesn’t surprise me in the least, but a series of experiments into the role of imagination in creating false memories has revealed that people who had watched a video of someone else doing a simple action often remembered doing the action themselves two weeks later. In fact in my book on remembering intentions, which includes a chapter on remembering whether you’ve done something, I mention the risk of imagining yourself doing something (that you then go on to believe you have actually done it), and given all the research on mirror neurons, it’s no big step to go from watching someone doing something to remembering that you did it. Nevertheless, it’s nice to get the confirmation.

The experiments involved participants performing several simple actions, such as shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards. Then they watched videos of someone else doing simple actions—some of which they had performed themselves and some of which they hadn’t. Two weeks later, they were asked which actions they had done. They were much more likely to falsely remember doing an action if they had watched someone else do it — even when they had been warned about the effect.

It seems likely that this is an unfortunate side-effect of a very useful ability — namely our ability to learn motor skills by observing others (using the aforesaid mirror neurons) — and there’s probably not a great deal we can do to prevent it happening. It’s just a reminder of how easy it is to form false memories.

Reference: 

[1839] Lindner, I., Echterhoff G., Davidson P. S. R., & Brand M.
(2010).  Observation Inflation.
Psychological Science. 21(9), 1291 - 1299.

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