Elizabeth Loftus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elizabeth Loftus
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Loftus at a meeting in Las Vegas in 2011
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Elizabeth Fishman
October 16, 1944 Bel Air, California, U.S.
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| Fields | Mathematical psychology |
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Elizabeth F. Loftus, born in 1944, is an American psychologist. She is famous for her work on how our memories can be changed or even created. Her research helps us understand how reliable eyewitness accounts are.
Dr. Loftus is well-known for studying the misinformation effect. This is when new, misleading information changes how someone remembers an event. She also researches false memory, which are memories of things that never actually happened. She has also looked into therapies that claim to help people "recover" forgotten memories.
Her studies include how the words used in questions can affect what people remember about car crashes. She also developed the ""lost in the mall" technique" to show how false memories can be planted. She even explored how false memories can change what foods people like.
Beyond her scientific work, Dr. Loftus has helped lawyers in over 300 court cases. She explains how memory works to help judges and juries understand evidence. She has also written many books, including The Myth of Repressed Memory and Witness for the Defense.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Growing Up in California
Elizabeth Fishman was born on October 16, 1944, in Bel Air, California. She grew up in a Jewish family. Her father was a doctor, and her mother worked as a librarian. When Elizabeth was 14, her mother passed away.
College and Advanced Degrees
Elizabeth Loftus studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1966, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in both mathematics and psychology.
She then continued her studies at Stanford University. She received her master's degree in mathematical psychology in 1967. In 1970, she completed her PhD in the same field. Her PhD paper was about how different parts of a problem affect how hard it is to solve using a computer.
Career and Research
Early Work and Memory Studies
From 1970 to 1973, Dr. Loftus worked as a cognitive psychologist in New York City. She was interested in how people understand and remember information.
In 1973, she joined the University of Washington. She started as an assistant professor. Instead of just working in a lab, she began to apply her research to real-life situations, especially in criminal court cases.
How Words Change Memories
The U.S. Department of Transportation once offered money for research on car crashes. Dr. Loftus took this chance to study how memory works. In one experiment, she showed 45 students videos of car crashes. Then, she asked them to guess the speed of the cars.
She found that the words used in the question made a big difference.
- When asked how fast the cars "collided," students guessed 32 miles per hour.
- When asked how fast they "hit each other," the guess was 34 miles per hour.
- But when asked how fast they "smashed each other," the average guess jumped to 41 miles per hour.
Dr. Loftus concluded that the way questions are asked after an event can actually change someone's memory of it. This is a key idea in her work on the misinformation effect.
Helping in Court Cases
In 1974, Dr. Loftus wrote articles about how eyewitness accounts can be different and how reliable witness memory is. Because of these articles, many lawyers started contacting her for help with their cases. This began her career of giving advice to lawyers.
At first, judges did not allow her to speak as an expert witness in court. But in June 1975, she became the first person in Washington State to give expert testimony about how people identify others.
Exploring False Memories
In the 1990s, Dr. Loftus became very interested in "recovered memories." These were memories of past events that people claimed to remember during therapy. She read books that encouraged therapists to help clients find "lost" memories of childhood experiences.
Around this time, one of her students, Jim Coan, developed the ""lost in the mall" technique." Jim told his younger brother three true stories from their childhood. He also added one false story about the brother getting lost in a mall. The younger brother believed all the stories, even the false one. He even added more details to the made-up story.
Dr. Loftus did a similar experiment. She found that about 25% of people believed a false story that had never happened to them. Another study by Loftus involved college students. About one-third of them believed a false story about a character from Disneyland licking their ear when they were children. These studies showed how easily false memories could be created.
Challenges and Recognition
After publishing these studies, Dr. Loftus faced some challenges. She even received threats because her work questioned the idea of repressed memories. Despite this, she continued her research and received awards for her contributions to psychology. In 1994, she received an award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
In 1997, Dr. Loftus was involved in the Jane Doe case. This case involved a recovered memory of childhood experiences. Dr. Loftus investigated the background of the case. She was later cleared of any wrongdoing by her university.
By 2001, Dr. Loftus left the University of Washington. She then joined the University of California, Irvine (UCI). There, she continued her research on memory. One experiment looked at how false information could change people's preferences for foods like cookies and strawberry ice cream.
In 2002, Dr. Loftus was ranked among the top 100 most influential psychological researchers of the 20th century. She has received many other awards, including the Grawemeyer Award in psychology in 2005. In 2013, she gave a popular talk at the TEDGlobal Conference in Scotland. In 2016, she received the John Maddox Prize.
The Memory Debate
Understanding Memory
Elizabeth Loftus has been a key figure in a big discussion about memory. This discussion is sometimes called the "Memory Wars." It's about whether memories of difficult past events can be completely forgotten and then accurately remembered later.
Dr. Loftus and others have shown that human memory is not always perfect. They argue that memories can be changed or even created through suggestions. This means that some memories, especially those "recovered" during certain therapies, might not be entirely true.
However, other experts believe that people can indeed forget traumatic events and then remember them later. They point to cases where this has happened.
Repression and Dissociative Amnesia
Dr. Loftus argues that there isn't strong evidence for something called "repression." Repression is the idea that the mind pushes away traumatic memories so they can't be recalled. She believes that forgetting can happen for other reasons, like normal forgetting.
Modern psychology guides, like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), don't use the term "repression." Instead, they use "dissociative amnesia." This is a type of forgetting caused by psychological factors, like extreme stress. It can involve forgetting short or long periods of one's life.
Different Views on Memory
Many psychologists, including Dr. Loftus, agree that human memory is often not an exact recording of facts. It can be influenced by many things.
The debate about true and false recovered memories is complex. Some researchers try to find a way to understand both sides of the argument. They believe there is truth in both the idea that memories can be forgotten and later remembered, and the idea that memories can be influenced or created.
Involvement in Legal Cases
Dr. Loftus has given expert testimony or advice in over 300 court cases. She helps legal teams understand how memory works and how it can affect witness statements.
Her work has been part of many well-known cases. She has helped explain memory in trials involving various individuals. Her role is to provide scientific information about memory, not to decide guilt or innocence.
Personal Life
From 1968 to 1991, Elizabeth Loftus was married to another psychologist, Geoffrey Loftus.
See also
In Spanish: Elizabeth Loftus para niños
