Elizabeth Loftus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elizabeth Loftus
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Elizabeth 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 a famous American psychologist. She is well-known for her work on how our memories can be changed or even created. She studies what happens when new information changes an old memory, which is called the misinformation effect. She also researches false memories, which are memories of things that never actually happened.
Dr. Loftus has done many interesting experiments. For example, she studied how the words used in a question can change someone's memory of a car crash. She also developed a technique called "lost in the mall," which showed how easy it can be to create a false memory. Her research has also looked at how false memories can affect what foods people prefer.
Besides her scientific studies, Dr. Loftus has helped lawyers in over 300 court cases. She shares her knowledge about memory to help people understand how reliable eyewitness accounts can be. She has also been a speaker at important psychology conferences.
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Early Life and Education
Elizabeth Fishman was born on October 16, 1944, in Bel Air, California. She grew up in a Jewish family. Her father, Sidney Fishman, was a doctor, and her mother, Rebecca Fishman, was a librarian. When Elizabeth was 14 years old, her mother sadly passed away.
She went to 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. There, she received her master's degree in 1967 and her PhD in mathematical psychology in 1970. Her PhD paper was about how different parts of a problem make it harder or easier to solve using a computer.
Career Highlights
Early Research (1970-1989)
From 1970 to 1973, Dr. Loftus worked as a cognitive psychologist in New York City. She wasn't very happy with her university work, which included checking math problems for fifth graders. At the same time, she was also studying how our brains store and use words, called semantic memory.
In 1973, Dr. Loftus joined the University of Washington. She started as an assistant professor and stayed there until 2001. She began to focus less on lab experiments and more on real-life situations, like those in criminal court cases.
Around this time, the Department of Transport was offering money for research on car accidents. Dr. Loftus did an experiment where she showed 45 students videos of car crashes. Then, she asked them to guess the speed of the cars. She found that the words she used in the question changed their answers.
For example, when she asked how fast the cars "collided," the average speed guessed was 32 miles per hour. When she asked how fast they "hit each other," the average was 34 miles per hour. But when she asked how fast they "smashed each other," the average guess went up to 41 miles per hour. This showed her that questions asked after an event can change how someone remembers it.
In 1974, Dr. Loftus wrote two articles about how reliable eyewitness accounts are. This led many lawyers to ask for her help with their cases. This was the start of her career advising lawyers. At first, judges didn't allow her to speak as an expert witness. But in June 1975, she became the first person to give expert testimony in Washington State about how reliable eyewitness identification is.
Memory Studies (1990-1996)
In 1990, Dr. Loftus was asked to help in a court case where a daughter claimed to remember a murder that happened 20 years earlier. This memory came back during therapy. The defense lawyer thought the daughter's memory might be a false one. Dr. Loftus was hired to explain this idea. She talked about an experiment where people watched a crime video and then read a wrong news report about it. Later, they mixed up details from the video with the news report. Dr. Loftus suggested something similar might have happened to the daughter.
However, the prosecutor pointed out that Dr. Loftus had not studied memories exactly like the daughter's. Dr. Loftus's work showed that memories could be changed, but not that they could be completely made up.
Around this time, one of Dr. Loftus's students, Jim Coan, developed the "lost in the mall" technique. He told his younger brother three true stories from his childhood, plus one false story about being lost in a mall. His brother believed all the stories, even adding details to the false one.
Dr. Loftus did a similar study and found that about 25% of people believed a false event had happened to them. However, some people criticized this study. They worried about the ethics of how the participants were chosen. Another study by Dr. Loftus involved 332 college students. About one-third of them believed a false story about having their ear licked by the character Pluto at Disneyland when they were children.
After these studies were published, Dr. Loftus sometimes had armed guards with her at lectures. She had also received threats after her 1994 book, The Myth of Repressed Memory, came out. In 1994, she received an award for promoting reason and critical thinking.
Later Career and Awards (1997-Present)
In 1997, a case study about a recovered memory, known as the Jane Doe case, was published. Dr. Loftus and a colleague looked into the case. They found some concerns about the background of the research. The university investigated Dr. Loftus for privacy issues, but after 21 months, she was cleared of any wrongdoing.
By 2001, Dr. Loftus left the University of Washington. She felt the university didn't support her enough during the Jane Doe case controversy. That same year, she received a major award from the Association for Psychological Science.
From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Loftus worked at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She was a respected professor in criminology, law, and psychology. She continued her research, including an experiment where she gave students false information about getting sick from cookies or strawberry ice cream as children. This study explored how false information could change their food preferences.
In 2002, Dr. Loftus was ranked among the top 100 most influential psychological researchers of the 20th century. The next year, she received an award for applying psychology to scientific problems from the American Psychological Association. She was also elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2003, Dr. Loftus and her colleagues were sued over an article they published about the Jane Doe case. The lawsuit had many claims, but most were dismissed. The remaining claim was settled in 2007, with Dr. Loftus's insurance company paying a small amount. She later published her studies on the case.
In 2004, she tried to create a false memory in actor Alan Alda on a TV show. Alda did not accept the false memory of getting sick from an egg as a child. Dr. Loftus has received many other awards, including the Grawemeyer Award in psychology in 2005 and the John Maddox Prize in 2016.
From 2011 to 2022, Dr. Loftus was on the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. She has also given keynote speeches at major psychology conferences, including TEDGlobal in 2013. In 2015, she received an honorary doctorate from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2018, she won the Western Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2022, Research.com listed Dr. Loftus as one of the world's top female scientists, ranking her at No. 451 in the United States.
The Memory Debate
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus has been a key figure in a big discussion about memory, sometimes called the "Memory Wars." This debate is about recovered memories versus false memories.
Dr. Loftus believes that there is strong evidence that people can change their memories. She argues that human memory is not always perfectly accurate. She also says that false memories can be put into people's minds through suggestions, especially during certain types of therapy. Because of this, she suggests that some memories of childhood abuse that come back during therapy might actually be false memories.
However, other experts disagree. They argue that there are many proven cases where people forget traumatic events from their childhood or adulthood and then remember them later. This happens in both people who are in therapy and those who are not.
Dr. Loftus believes that the idea of repressed memory (where a traumatic memory is pushed out of awareness) is not accurate. She criticizes therapies that rely on finding these "repressed" memories.
Some researchers, like Richard McNally, suggest that forgetting childhood abuse can be explained by normal forgetting or simply not talking about it. They don't think a special process like "repression" is needed to explain it.
Modern medical guides, like the DSM-5 and ICD-11, don't use the term "repression." Instead, they use dissociative amnesia. This is when someone forgets certain personal events due to psychological reasons, like stress. This forgetting can last for short or long periods.
Some psychologists, including Dr. Loftus, Julia Shaw, and Daniel Schacter, agree that human memory is often not a perfect record of what happened.
A book called True and False Recovered Memories (2012) tries to bring together the different ideas in this debate. It looks for the truth and good points from both sides.
Involvement in Legal Cases
Dr. Loftus has given expert testimony in over 300 court cases. She has also advised lawyers in many more. Her work helps courts understand how memory works and how reliable eyewitness accounts can be.
Personal Life
From 1968 to 1991, Elizabeth was married to another psychologist, Geoffrey Loftus.
