Knowing Too Much Gives False Memories

                Knowing a lot about something doubles the risk of false memories, scientists said, giving insight into why experts sometimes make errors on their own specialized subjects. People more knowledgeable about a subject were twice as likely to remember incidents relating to that topic that never happened. Researchers asked 489 people to rank seven topics, including football, politics and science form most to least interesting. They then asked if they remembered events described in four news items about the topic they selected as most interesting and four items about the topic they selected as least interesting. The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, it increased frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. But it also increased the number of false memories too – 25% of people experienced a false memory related to an interesting topic, compared with 10% related to a less interesting topic. Increasing public understanding of the cause of false memory is an important goal, particularly in light of some of the more negative consequences associated with the phenomenon, including faulty eyewitness accounts and the controversies surrounding false memories of traumatic childhood events. Researchers found that having a high level of knowledge about a topic – rather than just an interest also increased frequency of false memories.