When A Lie Becomes Memory's Truth: Memory Distortion After Exposure to Misinformation^

What happens when people witness an event, say, a crime or accident, and are later exposed to new information about that event? Two decades of research have been devoted to the influence of new information on the recollections of such witnesses. An all-too-common findIng is that after receipt of new information that is misleading in some way, people make errors when they report what they saw. New, postevent information often becomes incorporated into a recollection, supplementing or altering it, sometimes in dramatic ways. New information invades us, like a Trojan horse, precisely because we do not detect its influence. Understanding how we become tricked by revised data about a witnessed event is a central goal of this research.