-Caveat Lector-
Source: University Of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/)
Date: Posted 6/12/2001
"I Tawt I Taw" A Bunny Wabbit At Disneyland: New Evidence Shows False
Memories Can Be Created
About one-third of the people who were exposed to a fake print
advertisement that described a visit to Disneyland and how they met and
shook hands with Bugs Bunny later said they remembered or knew the
event happened to them.
The scenario described in the ad never occurred because Bugs Bunny is a
Warner Bros. cartoon character and wouldn't be featured in any Walt
Disney Co. property, according to University of Washington memory
researchers Jacquie Pickrell and Elizabeth Loftus. Pickrell will make two
presentations on the topic at the annual meeting of the American
Psychological Society (APS) on Sunday (June 17) in Toronto and at a
satellite session of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and
Cognition in Kingston, Ontario, on Wednesday.
"The frightening thing about this study is that it suggests how easily a false
memory can be created," said Pickrell, UW psychology doctoral student.
"It's not only people who go to a therapist who might implant a false
memory or those who witness an accident and whose memory can be
distorted who can have a false memory. Memory is very vulnerable and
malleable. People are not always aware of the choices they make. This
study shows the power of subtle association changes on memory."
The research is a follow-up to an unpublished study by Loftus, a UW
psychology professor who is being honored by the APS this week with its
William James Fellow Award for psychological research; Kathryn Braun, a
visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School; and Rhiannon Ellis, a
former UW undergraduate who is now a doctoral student at the University
of Pittsburgh. In the original study, 16 percent of the people exposed to a
Disneyland ad featuring Bugs Bunny later thought they had seen and met
the cartoon rabbit.
In the new research, Pickrell and Loftus divided 120 subjects into four
groups. The subjects were told they were going to evaluate advertising
copy, fill out several questionnaires and answer questions about a trip to
Disneyland.
The first group read a generic Disneyland ad that mentioned no cartoon
characters. The second group read the same copy and was exposed to a
4-foot-tall cardboard figure of Bugs Bunny that was casually placed in the
interview room. No mention was made of Bugs Bunny. The third, or Bugs
group, read the fake Disneyland ad featuring Bugs Bunny. The fourth, or
double, exposure group read the fake add and also saw the cardboard
rabbit.
This time 30 percent of the people in the Bugs group later said they
remembered or knew they had met Bugs Bunny when they visited
Disneyland and 40 percent of the people in the double exposure group
reported the same thing.
"'Remember' means the people actually recall meeting and shaking hands
with Bugs," explained Pickrell. "'Knowing' is they have no real memory, but
are sure that it happened, just as they have no memory of having their
umbilical cord being cut when they were born but know it happened.
"Creating a false memory is a process. Someone saying, 'I know it could
have happened,' is taking the first step of actually creating a memory. If you
clearly believe you walked up to Bugs Bunny, you have a memory."
In addition, Pickrell said there is the issue of the consequence of false
memories or the ripple effects. People in the experiment who were
exposed to the false advertising were more likely to relate Bugs Bunny to
other things at Disneyland not suggested in the ad, such as seeing Bugs
and Mickey Mouse together or seeing Bugs in the Main Street Electrical
Parade.
"We are interested in how people create their autobiographical references,
or memory. Through this process they might be altering their own
memories," she said. "Nostalgic advertising works in a similar manner.
Hallmark, McDonald's and Disney have very effective nostalgic advertising
that can change people's buying habits. You may not have had a great
experience the last time you visited Disneyland or McDonald's, but the ads
may be inadvertently be creating the impression that they had a wonderful
time and leaving viewers with that memory. If ads can get people to believe
they had an experience they never had, that is pretty powerful.
"The bottom line of our study is that the phony ad is making the difference.
Just casually reading a Bugs Bunny cartoon or some other incidental
exposure doesn't mean you believe you met Bugs. The ad does."
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