Mirage or Memory: How Writing Prompts May Generate False Memories

When I began my sabbatical research in August of 2023, the topic of false memories was  not something that I had anticipated spending the next two months trying to understand. The  overarching goal of this investigation was to examine the impact that trauma has had on writing  pedagogies. This initial qualitative investigation would conduct a series of surveys and  interviews with instructors and students who have taught or enrolled in writing courses at  accredited two-year and four-year colleges, paying close attention to how personal traumatic  experiences (PTEs) presented in classrooms immediately prior to and after the COVID-19  pandemic. I had expected to encounter students and instructors wrestling with many of the same  life experiences that I struggled to come to terms with as a first-generation college student, and  later as a professor (e.g. mental illness of a parent, varying degrees of physical and emotional  abuse, child-loss, etc.). However, as the first student surveys rolled in, one of the short answer  responses described how an assignment enabled a student to “recover memories” that they had  little to no recollection of to begin with and how those memories were a catalyst for conflict  within that student’s family. As I delved more deeply into this student’s responses, the subject of  false memories emerged as a significant part of this student’s experience, causing me to consider  how the design of a writing assignment at a two-year community college could potentially  generate false memories. By gaining an understanding of how false memories are formed, then  analyzing assignment prompts, this article explores how course projects could be contributing to the creation of false memories and provide steps that may be taken to minimize this risk in the  future.

Literature Review

Understanding False Memories

False memories have been a subject of interest in the field of clinical psychology for most  of the 20th century. According to the American Psychological Association (2018, April 19), a  false memory is “a distorted recollection of an event or [. . .] of an event that never actually  happened. False memories are errors of commission, because details, facts, or events come to  mind, often vividly, but the remembrances fail to correspond to prior events.” False memories, often referred to as recovered or illusory memories, can vary in severity, and those who have  experienced personal traumatic experiences are often predisposed to them. In minor cases,  individuals may simply recall specific details that do not align with veritable fact. One example  from my own life occurred in during my freshman year of college, when I was struck by a drunk  driver. When questioned by police at the scene, I described the vehicle that struck me as a white  Ford Expedition. Luckily, a good Samaritan witnessed the accident, then proceeded to follow the  driver onto the interstate as they fled the scene. After calling 911, police executed a stop, then  arrested the driver on suspicion of DUI and charged them additionally with a hit-and-run. What  shocked me in the weeks to follow was the fact that the SUV turned out to be a white Nissan  Pathfinder, not a Ford Expedition, despite the fact that (even today) I can close my eyes, envision  the front of the vehicle barreling toward me, and see very clearly the Ford emblem displayed on  its grill. This memory is vivid for me—but clearly that recollection was not supported by the  evidence.

When minor cases of false memories occur, they can have massive consequences,  particularly when concerning eye-witness testimony during criminal investigations. Consider  then the extent of the damage that can occur in extreme cases, when memories of events that  never took place are implanted into a person’s memory. Research conducted by Dr. Elizabeth  Loftus during the “memory wars” of the 1990s focused on the phenomenon of “repressed  memories.” Throughout her investigations, Loftus demonstrated how fabricated memories were being implanted in patients by therapists, and were not, in fact, recovered memories that had  been repressed due to trauma (Patihis et al., 2014). During an interview on the podcast Speaking  of Psychology, Loftus explains:

Some patients were going into therapy—maybe they had anxiety, maybe they had an  eating disorder, maybe they were depressed, and they would end up with a therapist who  said something like well, many people I’ve seen with your symptoms were sexually  abused as a child. And they would begin these activities that would lead these patients to  start to think that they remembered years of brutalization that they had allegedly banished  into the unconscious until this therapy made them aware of it [. . .] My work showed that  you could plant very rich, detailed false memories in the minds of people. It didn’t mean  that repressed memories did not exist [. . .] but there really wasn’t any credible scientific  evidence for this idea of massive repression, and yet so many families were destroyed by  this unsupported claim. (Luna, 2019)

Although Loftus does not discount the possibility that repressed memories could exist, she does  demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, memory can be manipulated, causing people to  recall things that are either inaccurate or never happened.

Generating False Memories:

Despite how complicated our cognitive processes are, creating false memories in the  clinical setting is remarkably simple. According to Loftus’s earlier research, false memories can  be implanted through a blend of trust, misinformation, imagination exercises, and repetition (False Memories, 2013; Scoboria et al., 2017). To better understand how this occurs, it may help  to think of false memory creation as a four-step process:

1. A person of authority gains the trust of a subject (client, student, etc.);
2. That authority uses the power of suggestion (e.g. leading questions) and claims supported  by anecdotal evidence to allude to a repressed memory;
3. The authority prompts the subject to “remember” when something might have happened  to them, encouraging them to add in their own details; and
4. The authority encourages the subject to imagine how they might feel in certain  circumstances, leading to something that Loftus terms “imagination inflation.”

To better observe this process in action, allow me to revisit one of my own false  memories—the memory of the night that I was struck by that drunk driver. First, when the  firefighters arrived on scene, I immediately recognized my friend’s stepfather. I had known him  for approximately three years prior to seeing him on the scene that night, and following that  event, a friendly face immediately had my trust. As an EMT checked my vitals, he did his best to  keep me calm, then casually asked me about the vehicle. I described it initially as a white SUV.  So far, so good. However, then he began asking leading questions, about the kind of SUV that I  thought it was. Initially, I did not remember, but then he asked me to close my eyes and think  carefully. Did I see a logo? Maybe a round name plate—like Ford? Or did I see the head of an  animal—Dodge maybe? When I closed my eyes, I saw a pair of blazing headlights just before the collision, and a round logo on the grill between them. The Ford logo. He asked me to  consider the size. Was it a smaller SUV, like an Explorer, or was it a larger SUV, like an  Expedition. Given how large the vehicle seemed to me at the time, I thought it had to be the big  one—the Expedition of course. Over the next ten minutes, as we waited for the state troopers to  arrive, my friend’s stepdad continued to ask me questions about what happened—repetitive  questions that had those details circulating through my mind. Once the police arrived on scene, I  had a very detailed description of the SUV—a description that I knew was accurate. That is until  the state trooper picked up a piece of plastic on the ground nearby. That plastic was a piece of the  fender of a Nissan Pathfinder, and it matched the white Nissan Pathfinder that they had pulled  over 5 miles north on Interstate 90.

Understanding the Risks and Benefits

As alluded to earlier, there are several risks associated with false memories. According to  the American Psychological Association (2018, April 19), illusory memories can often be just as  vivid as those derived from authentic experiences, with all the same repercussions. This means  that false memories of negative experiences can induce the same traumatic responses in  individuals who previously did not exhibit those symptoms (Otgaar et al., 2017). Likewise, as  individuals with existing diagnoses of PTSD and depression are particularly susceptible to  memory distortion, creating new false memories may have a compounding effect that  complicates and endangers their road to potential recovery (Otgaar, et al., 2017). Moreover,  depending on subject of these memories, they can often lead to social isolation, family rifts, and  can often have legal implications, particularly when included as testimony in criminal or civil  cases.

Though there are many negative implications to bear in mind, false memories do have  some limited, therapeutic benefits as well. One application of false memories that emerged from  Loftus’s research came in the form of diet modification, particularly for individuals who are  struggling with chronic health conditions brought on by obesity. In one case study, Loftus  determined that it was possible to implant false memories to make people more averse to fatty  foods. According to Loftus, “[We] planted a false memory that you got sick eating strawberry ice  cream. People told us they didn’t want to eat it as much” (False Memories, 2013). Similarly,  Loftus went on to explain that researchers have also successfully implanted positive memories  about healthy foods, and as a result helped individuals to make healthier dietary decisions. Today  researchers are continuing to explore whether implanting false memories through hypnotherapy  might help some patients to counter their physiological responses that are derived from  associated with negative experiences which impact patients with various forms of PTSD and  anxiety disorders.

Research Questions

With a basic understanding of what false memories are, where they come from, and the  positive and negative implications associated with them, the next step is to determine whether  they indeed pose a risk to writing students. For this reason, this investigation will focus on the  following research questions:

1. To what extent could writing assignments generate false memories in students? 2. If so, what steps can instructors take to manage this risk in the future?

Methods

Participants

This inquiry focused primarily on how undergraduate students responded to writing  assignments in two first-year composition courses. Preliminary findings were based off a sample  of 92 undergraduate students, enrolled at ten different institutions across various states. Among  them, 23 students were sampled from two-year colleges in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while  69 students were enrolled at public four-year universities in Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin,  Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

Data Collection

The first data collection tool employed during this investigation was a qualitative survey that was initially designed to examine the impact of trauma on the undergraduate writing student  experience. This survey consisted of ten multiple-choice questions, intended to gain insights into  how trauma might have impacted writing courses. Additionally, two short-answer questions  provided students an opportunity to explain how trauma presented during specific assignments  and describe their response.

In addition to this survey, an artifact analysis of two assignment prompts was conducted.  These prompts were volunteered by instructors, and both were actual assignments that sampled  students referred to in their narrative responses. A rubric was devised, based upon the prior  research of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. This rubric evaluated the writing prompts according to the four step process (outlined previously) that led to the generation of false memories in Loftus’s  previous studies. Reading the assignment prompts through that lens, each one was evaluated to  determine whether there was evidence that instructors tried to establish trust with students, used of suggestive language to guide student responses, and incorporated imaginative exercises or repetition that might result in imagination inflation. Artifacts were then scored according to a  three-point scale in each area of interest (See Table 1).

Table 1: Rubric utilized to assess false memory risk for assignment prompts.

Two assignment prompts were examined as a part of the artifact analysis: one from a  memoir essay assignment, sampled by a first-year writing course at a community college in  western Pennsylvania, and another from an auto-ethnographic essay assignment in a first-year  writing course at a four-year university in Minnesota.

Preliminary Findings & Discussion

Student Survey Responses

As I mentioned previously, the initial goal of this research was not intending to address  the topic of false memories explicitly. Instead, these surveys were intended to determine the  impact that personal traumatic experiences have had on post-secondary writing pedagogies. This initial student survey returned 92 student responses (23 from two-year colleges and 69 from four year universities). Of those responses 72 had described course assignments that required students  to engage with the subject of personal traumatic experiences, with an additional 15 students  indicating that writing about personal traumatic experiences was an option in at least one of their  writing courses.

The suggestion that false memories may have impacted the student experience first  emerged in response to the short answer portion of the survey, specifically in response to the  following prompt: Describe your experience with an assignment that may have been impacted (directly or indirectly) by personal trauma. At first, students described a variety of personal  narrative assignments that asked them to explore moments of personal growth or change— assignments which seemed rather innocent on the surface. However, as I read about a personal  memoir assignment, one student mentioned “recovered memories.” According to this response,  “I didn’t remember a lot about what happened. But when I write about it, I start [to] remember. It  was weird. Like new memories came up that I didn’t even know were there.” At first this student  response seemed to be an outlier, but as the survey accrued more responses, the following  responses stood out:

• “Writing about the attack made me start to doubt what really happened. Its like I couldn’t  tell if it was real. I thought I knew the truth but now I’m not sure.”
• “I felt like I had to come up with a good story for the assignment. I think I might have  exaggerated some parts just to make it more interesting.”
• “I wrote about something really personal for my assignment, but when I read it after  class was over, it didn’t feel like my story anymore.”
• “[Dad] called me a liar when he read it over for me. Now we don’t talk and I don’t know  what to do.”

Several students mentioned changing memories and confusion in response to writing  assignments that invoked trauma, and three mentioned a degree of social isolation (with friends  or family members) as a result. Although it is difficult to say whether these students were  actually generating false memories or not, the word choices of these students seemed to imply  that something may have been going on with their memories while completing their assignments.  Add in the comment about someone no longer talking to their father because of an assignment,  and it seemed that (in the very least), a supplemental investigation was warranted.  Artifact Analysis

One of the assignments discussed by the students in the survey was a memoir essay,  assigned in a first-year composition course at a community college in western Pennsylvania (See  Figure 1). This assignment required students to produce a 1,500-2,000 word essay exploring a  significant experience in the student’s life when they “overcame adversity.” Although the prompt  does not require students to explicitly explore a past trauma, this assignment does leave the  option open for students to revisit a potentially traumatic memory if they choose to. The  language used in the assignment prompt also appears to be moderately suggestive, making an  assumption that students have overcome adversity, and then providing leading language to guide  students toward the subjects of bullying, accidents, illnesses and injuries. However, the element  in the prompt that is perhaps the riskiest is the mention of “creative license.” In this case, as the  instructor directly encourages students to incorporate descriptive writing that appeals to all five  senses and re-create dialogue “within reason,” which could run the risk of manipulating  memories through imagination inflation. Overall, the memoir assignment prompt scored 8 out of a potential 12 points, which indicates that this assignment, as designed, carries a moderate risk  for generating false memories in students.

Figure 1: Memoir essay writing prompt form a two-year college in Pennsylvania

The second assignment that arose from this investigation was an autoethnography essay assigned by a professor at a mid-sized, four-year university in Minnesota. Unlike the memoir  assignment above which provided students with an option to explore experiences that might be  considered traumatic, the autoethnography assignment required students to explicitly write about  the COVID-19 pandemic, arguably the most significant collective trauma of our current  generation (see Figure 2). This assignment prompt also had suggestive language, making an assumption that the social lives of students had been significantly changed, and it attempted to  support this assumption with an example from the instructor’s own life (bolstering the  instructor’s ethos). Not only this, but the example from the instructor’s life (their new  involvement with an XBOX gaming community) could be seen an attempt to garner trust with  some of their students. Suggestive language continues throughout the overview of the  assignment, as the instructor suggests some ways that student lives might have been changed,  with signal words like “perhaps” and “maybe” to subtly guide students toward topics. However,  it is also worth noting that this assignment does not explicitly encourage the use of “creative  license” or other phrases which would lead me to believe that imagination inflation might be a  problem. Overall, this assignment prompt scored an 8 out of 12 as well, indicating that this to  may also carry with it a moderate risk for creating false memories.

Figure 2: Autoethnography essay prompt from a four-year university in Minnesota.

Conclusions

It is important to note that differentiating between false memories and memories rooted in  authentic experience is very difficult. For that reason, this study does not have sufficient data to  determine whether the “recovered memories” disclosed by the students in their surveys were  authentic memories or not. However, I would suggest that comments offered by students  indicating that these memories were “confusing,” caused tension with family members, and that  some students may have exaggerated claims while completing those assignments indicate that we  cannot rule illusory memories out as a possibility either. After a close reading of two assignment  prompts, it became clear that some of the strategies used by psychologists to implant false  memories during clinical research were also observable within the context of some writing  assignments. This would indicate that there could be a moderate risk in students developing false  memories, at least within the context of the sampled projects. This risk could be reduced by  analyzing the design of those assignments and taking a few key precautions.

1. Do not require students to engage with PTEs in the context of a writing assignment. Writing is highly therapeutic. It reduces the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder  (PTSD), enhances emotional processing, reduces anxiety and depression, and promotes social  support. For those reasons, a subset of the student population will continue to explore their  personal traumas in the context of almost any writing assignment. However, for writing to have  these therapeutic benefits, the individual must be prepared for the experience. If a trauma is too  recent, or too severe, it is simply not recommended to have students explore those traumas  within the context of a course assignment. For that reason, it is recommended that instructors not  design assignments that force students to explore the topic of trauma. As traumatic experiences place individuals at higher risks of being impacted by false memories, it is vital to provide  students with alternative options to ensure that no additional harm is done.
2. Have resources ready for those occasions when students choose to write about their  PTEs. On those occasions when student do engage with personal traumatic experiences (either  directly or indirectly), it is essential that instructors be prepared. Many colleges and universities  require instructors to list mental health resources that are available on campus within their course  syllabi. This is a good first step. However, with how overburdened counselling centers on  campus have become, and as funding for mental health on college campuses continually falls  short of student need, simply including campus resources is not enough. For this reason,  instructors should compile a list of regional resources as well. Provide direct numbers for  regional crisis centers, as well as reputable national helplines. When a student
3. Avoid suggestive language when designing assignment prompts. Individual trauma responses differ greatly from one person to the next. Although some  experiences may be viewed as universally traumatic (e.g. witnessing a death, imprisonment,  etc.), not all individuals will respond in the same way to that trauma. This means that while the  COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 impacted most people across the United States in some way, the  trauma inflicted was not universal. It is vital to not make assumptions about what does and does  not constitute a traumatic experience. Going further, when a student is engaging with an  experience that is potentially traumatic to them, it is essential to avoid using suggestive language  that may influence how they process that experience. For example, there is a subset of the  population which may not have been significantly hindered by the lockdown experience. Using  suggestive language that labels the experience as “traumatic” poisons the well for those individuals, which may actually result in a false memory that inflicts some level of trauma on  students who may not have described the experience as traumatic.  

4. Minimize the use of creative license to reduce the risk of “imagination inflation.”  Imagination inflation is one of the ways that an individual internalizes and assumes  ownership of a false memory. It is the repetition of imaginative exercises which allows a thought  to be developed and internalized, which then creates a new subjective “truth” for that individual.  The writing process, by nature, is incredibly repetitive. Just consider how prewriting exercises  allows you to begin with an idea, and how that idea evolves as it is guided through several drafts.  Although creative license is appropriate for some writing genres (e.g. fiction, poetry, creative  nonfiction, etc.), academic assignments where students engage with trauma should limit a  student’s use of creative license to avoid establishing an environment that could risk students  fostering false memories. This is not to say that we should eliminate creative license completely  from writing courses. However, instructors should consider the rhetorical purpose and goals of  their assignment, and then select the level of creative license that is appropriate to help mitigate  these risks.

To better understand how false memories might be generated within the context of the  writing classroom and the risks that this may pose to student health, additional research is  necessary. Sample data that was explored in the context of this preliminary investigation is from  a relatively small sample, and the variety of writing assignments employed in writing classrooms  vary greatly from one institution to the next. However, by taking steps to better understand how  false memories are created, instructors will be able to continue to develop trauma informed  pedagogies that will support their students and create healthier, more productive classroom  environments.

References

Alexander, K.S., Nalloor, R., Bunting, K.M., & Vazdarjanova, A. (2020, January 14).  Investigating individual pre-trauma susceptibility to a PTSD-like phenotype in animals.  Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2019.00085

American Psychological Association. (2018, April 19). APA Dictionary of Psychology.  https://dictionary.apa.org/trauma

Birkholm, M. (2019). Understanding Trauma. The Great Courses.

False Memories: Skepticism, susceptibility, and the impact on psychology. (2013). In Films on  Demand. Films on Demand Media Group.

https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=240117&xtid=53552

Luna, K. (Host). (2019, October). How memory can be manipulated, with Elizabeth  Loftus, PhD (Episode 91) [Audio podcast episode]. In Speaking of Psychology. American  Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of psychology/memory-manipulated

Otgaar, H., Muris, P., Howe, M.L., & Merckelbach, H. (2017). What drives false memories in  psychology? A case for associative activation. Clinical psychology science: a journal of  the Association for Psychological Science, 5(6), 1048-1069.

Patihis, L., Ho, L.Y., Tingen, I.W., Lilienfeld, S.O., & Loftus, E.F. (2014). Are the memory wars  over? A scientist-practitioner gap in beliefs about repressed memory. Psychological  Science, 25(2), 510-530. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613510718

Scoboria, A. et al. (2017). A mega-analysis of memory reports from eight peer-reviewed false  Memory implantation studies. Memory, 25(2). 146-163.

WRITING PROMPTS MAY GENERATE FALSE MEMORIES 19

Shaw, J. (2020). Do false memories look real? Evidence that people struggle to identify rich false  memories of committing crime and other emotional events. Frontiers in Psychology, 11,  650, 1-7.