Elizabeth Loftus was born on October 16, 1944 in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were Sidney and Rebecca Fishman and when she was 14, her mother passed away in a drowning accident. Originally, Elizabeth wanted to be a math teacher so in 1966 she went to UCLA for a bachelor's degree in mathematics. However, while she was studying at UCLA she came across psychology and ended up graduating with a Bachelor of the Arts in Math and Psychology degree. Elizabeth then went to Stanford University and graduated with her MA in 1967 and her Ph.D. in 1970, both in mathematical psychology. In 1968, she married George Loftus but they ended up getting a divorce in 1991. During her time at Stanford, she became very interested in long-term memory. It relates back to a story she likes to tell that happened 20 years after her mother drowned. During a family gathering, a relative mentioned to her about being the one that found her mother in the pool which lead her to begin to recall several memories, even memories that she did not know she had in her memory. However, her uncle later told her it was actually her aunt who found her mother not her. Today, she uses this story to add fuel to the battle she is fighting about memory and how it is easy to create false memories. AT 230
Elizabeth has received many awards and accomplished so much. In 1973, she published her first book called Human Memory. Elizabeth had a very busy year in 1974 where she worked for the Department of Transportation, was a member of the editorial boards for Journal of Experimental Psychology, and published an article on memory that ended up getting her into a courtroom as a witness. From 1975 to 1976, she was a fellow of the American Council of Education and in 1976 Cognitive Processes was published. Elizabeth’s second book, Eyewitness Testimony, was published in 1979. This is also the year she became Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. The following year, she published Law and Human Behaviour and in 1983 she was honored by being invited to present her work to the Royal Society in London. The Myth of Repressed Memory was then published in 1994 and Remembering Dangerously in 1995. Elizabeth received several awards during the next eighteen years and below is a list of the different awards.
1995 – Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Academy of Forensic Psychology
2003 – APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology
2003 – Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2005 – Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology
2005 – Elected to the Royal Society in Edinburgh
2005 – Lauds and Laurels Faculty Achievement Award, University of California, Irvine
2009 – Distinguished Contributions to Psychology and Law Award from the American Psychology-Law Society
2010 – Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists
2010 – Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
2012 – William T. Rossiter Award from the Forensic Mental Health Association of California
2013 – Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation
Elizabeth was awarded six different honorary doctorates starting in 1984 until 2006. Her first doctorate she received in 1982 which was from Miami University in Ohio. The second she received in 1990 from Leiden University in the Netherlands. In 1994, she received her third honorary doctorate from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York which was an honorary doctorate of laws. She received her fourth in 1998 from the University of Portsmouth in England. The fifth she received in 2005 from the University of Haifa in Israel and the sixth she received in 2006 from the University of Osio.
Elizabeth’s main focus is on the influence of misleading information such as visual imagery and wording of questions in relation to eyewitness testimony. She realized that not all memories are accurate and that the human brain is vulnerable to alteration. She proposes that the brain can make up memories to fill gaps of information it does not know. Elizabeth suggested memories that are pushed away but come to mind years later are not memories of actual events but ideas created from waking and dreaming situations. Her theory is that someone who is exposed to new information during the interval between witnessing the event or recalling it, might cause some effects on what they recall. Overall, she is saying the original memory can be modified, changed, or supplemented. Elizabeth has since done several experiments to back up her theory.
One of those experiments is the Estimated Speed for Verb Used experiment. In this experiment, forty-five American students participated. It was a laboratory experiment that contained five conditions but each student only experienced one. To start off, seven films of traffic accidents, ranging in duration from 5 to 30 seconds, were randomly shown to a group of students. After watching the film the participants were asked to describe what they saw happened as if they were an eyewitness. Following this, they were then asked specific questions which included questions like “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?” A different verb was used each time to describe when happened between the two cars. The results were that the speed was affected by the verb used. For example, the students who were asked the question using the verb “smashed” thought the cars were going faster than those who were asked using the verb “hit”. The students who were asked using the “smashed” verb reported the highest speed estimate (40.8 mph), followed by “collided” (39.3 mph), “bumped” (38.1 mph), “hit” (34 mph), and “contacted” (31.8 mph) in descending order. In conclusion, this proves Elizabeth’s theory about a person’s long-term memory. The original memory of what the students saw was altered based on what verb was used to describe the accident. One word changed what they remembered. Therefore, eyewitness testimonies could be biased based on the way questions are asked after a crime was committed. At 795
Alison George: You study the fallibility of memories. Are we all prone to making things up?
Elizabeth Loftus: We all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to being contaminated or supplemented in some way.
AG: What exactly is going on when we retrieve a memory?
EL: When we remember something, we're taking bits and pieces of experience—sometimes from different times and places—and bringing it all together to construct what might feel like a recollection but is actually a construction. The process of calling it into conscious awareness can change it, and now you're storing something that's different. We all do this, for example, by inadvertently adopting a story we've heard—like Romney did.
AG: How did you end up studying false memories?
EL: Early in my career, I had done some very theoretical studies of memory, and after that I wanted to [do] work that had more obvious practical uses. The memory of witnesses to crimes and accidents was a natural place to go. In particular I looked at what happens when people are questioned about their experiences. I would ultimately see those questions as a means by which the memories got contaminated.
AG: Is there any way to distinguish a false memory from a real one?
EL: Without independent corroboration, little can be done to tell a false memory from a true one.
AG: Do you think it's important for people to realize how malleable their memory is?
EL: My work has made me tolerant of memory mistakes by family and friends. You don't have to call them lies. I think we could be generous and say maybe this is a false memory.