This is a Lexicon entry: the mechanism, when it shows up, and the countermeasure. The full correction, with real-world cases and the audit prompt, hasn't been written yet.
Definition
The phenomenon in which people recall events with confidence that never actually happened or remember real events with details that were not present. Memory is not a recording - it is a reconstruction.
When it shows up
Eyewitness testimony, therapy, family memory disputes, aging memory. Any confident recall of detail from long past.
Failure mode
The mind reconstructs memory at each retrieval, incorporating new information and current frames. What feels like remembering is partly generating. False memories feel identical to real ones from inside; no introspection tells them apart.
Countermeasure
Treat detailed memories of mundane events with skepticism. Verify with contemporaneous records when stakes are high. Coherence of a memory is not evidence of accuracy.
Related traps
Also connected in the map5 more, locked
Credit & first seen
DiscoveredLoftus, E.F.&Pickrell, J.E. (1995).'The formation of false memories.'Psychiatric Annals 25(12), 720-725 source ↗
Also revealed
Entry #122 of 631 in The Lexicon · see the full Lexicon