Can false memories be good for us? UCC researchers launch €1.5m study
The UCC researchers will investigate whether creating false memories might actually serve useful purposes. Picture: iStock
A new University College Cork-led project will test a bold idea – whether false memories might actually be useful and even make us happier.
It aims to explore the potential upsides of something usually seen in a negative light and examine if false memories can be reliable, adaptive, and functional.
UCC’s Dr Gillian Murphy is leading the project, which has received a highly competitive €1.5m grant from the European Research Council. The project is titled Functional, Reliable and Adaptive Memory Errors (FRAME).
Almost straight out of a science fiction story like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall, Dr Murphy said understanding why memory works as it does is a “critical and urgent question with implications for every human-related field of study.”
“Memories are prone to distortion, and this is often viewed negatively,” she said.
“However, memory did not evolve to act as a recording device. It evolved under the same selective pressures as anything else in the natural world - survival and reproduction.”
Research has long shown that personal memories aren’t fixed. They can shift and change over time. Even a simple conversation can reshape them or create memories of events that never happened.
Such distortions can have serious consequences. Flawed eyewitness testimony, for example, can lead to wrongful convictions in criminal trials.
The UCC researchers will investigate whether creating false memories might actually serve useful purposes, depending on the situation and the individual.
Dr Murphy said the project will test whether memory malleability allows people to feel happier and integrate more effectively in social groups, while memory accuracy may be prioritised for survival-related information.
It will also explore how people might study and use functional false memories in an ethical way and will culminate in a new model of memory.
“Cognitive psychologists tend to be preoccupied with memory accuracy, such that deviations from accuracy are referred to in our theoretical memory models as errors, distortions, and failures,” she said.
“[This] represents a radical new approach, where we will experimentally test memory in unconventional ways to explore the potential benefits of false memories. Empirical evidence for this functional account of false memories would represent a paradigm-shift in the way we think about human memory, reframing our flaws as features.”
