is likely to affect recollection when it is relatively difficult for people to dis-
criminate between the misinformation event and the to-be-remembered event
(Lindsay, 1993). So, for example, our hypothetical Jim—mentioned at the be-
ginning of this chapter—might be prone to remember incorrectly that the thief
stoleacamera(when,infact,hesawthethiefstealaradio)becauseheheard
someone at the crime scene tell the police that the thief stole a camera. But Jim
would be far less likely to remember incorrectly that the thief stole a camera if
he heard someone talking about a missing camera the day after the theft and in
a different physical setting than where the theft took place.
Loftus (1986) estimates that thousands of people in the United States are
wrongfully convicted each year, and that many of these wrongful convictions
are due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. Juries deliberating the fate of peo-
ple accused of crimes need to be made aware of the fallibility of human mem-
ory and the ease with which details of the past can be inaccurately recollected.
Hypnosis and Memory Sometimes it is supposed that hypnosis can help people
better recollect crimes and accidents. As it turns out, psychologists debate
whether hypnosis is a distinctive state of waking consciousness that is different
from ordinary wakefulness or is merely an occasion in which some people are
unusually motivated to carry out the requests of the hypnotist (see Farthing,
1992). Whatever the exact nature of hypnosis, certainly it is commonly believed
that hypnosis promotes such accurate recall of the past that nearly all events
must be stored in memory. The reality, though, is that when hypnosis is used to
help eyewitnesses recollect a crime, accident, or any past event, hypnotized
people do not remember details any more accurately than do nonhypnotized
people. Hypnotized people, though, may be more confident about their recol-
lections than nonhypnotized people (Buckhout, Eugenio, Licitia, Oliver, &
Kramer, 1981; Krass, Kinoshita, & McConkey, 1989). Furthermore, hypnotized
eyewitnesses are influenced by misleading questions even more than are non-
hypnotized people.
Putnam (1979) presented subjects a videotape of a car accident and later
hypnotized some subjects. When asked a misleading question like ‘‘Did you see
the license plate number on the car?’’ some hypnotized subjects claimed to re-
member the numbers on the license plate when, in fact, the license plate was
not visible in the film. Note that by using the phrase ‘‘the license plate,’’ the
question implies that the license plate was visible. Some of the hypnotized
subjects presumably used the misleading implication in the question to recon-
struct a number for the license plate. The subjects who were not hypnotized
were less likely to fall for the misleading questions.
Hypnosis has also been used to attempt age regression, in which hypnotized
adults may claim that they are really reliving some experience from childhood.
But investigations reveal that the recollected details are often inaccurate (Nash,
1987). In one case, an adult who was hypnotically age-regressed remembered
inaccurately a first-grade teacher’s name. In another case, an adult who was
hypnotically regressed to age 6 was asked to draw a picture. While the picture
the adult produced looked childlike, it did not resemble the subject’s own
drawings made at age 6. Instead, the drawing reflected an adult’s conception of
a childish drawing, but not real children’s drawings.
Memory 337