People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened

In this case, I don't have access to the full text of the paper, but the "supplementary materials" are freely available, including the scripts that were used for the interviews and debriefing process. Some choice quotes:

"We predicted that in a significant proportion of participants, we could convince them that childhood events happened when in fact they did not. There is no reason for you to feel any more susceptible to such processes than anyone else (if applicable). This is a completely normal, common occurrence." ... "If at this point you would like to withdraw your data from the study, you are able to do so without penalty." ... "If you feel that you suffered any distress as a result of this study, please let us know as we can arrange to have a counsellor speak to you. No-one will have access to your identity or specific information you provided except for the study coders."

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2015/01/14/095679761456...

But this is a pretty important study I'd say, almost on par with the Stanford prison experiment for "pop" awareness.

Congratulations!!! Probably every convicted rapist though something equivalent at some point, so you are in good company to be sure.

How memory works, according to humanity : we store all data input in our mind, where it stays. Every now and again some data disappears or is overwritten.

5 seconds of thinking about how a mind looks and what it does will leave you with 100 very hard questions about how you could possibly make that happen in a neural network.

How memory works, the real version : you "learn" memory. When a person is presented with a pointer to a specific point in time or a specific event, his mind then reconstructs the memory by repeatedly asking the question "what happened next ?". All the data produced comes from the predictor, not from actual memory.

So what is actually stored in your memory ? Well useful things. Not an index of dates combined with what happened. But "I start my day, then wash my teeth, then make a piece of toast, then ..."

"What did you do yesterday ?"

("conversation" in someone's mind starts happening :

"well obviously I woke up. Then what ? I washed my teeth. Ok, then what ?

interrogator interrupts You ate a biscuit your mind

Ok that sounds reasonable, and I'm not all that sure at all. He may be right. I'll go with it)

Memory changed. Next time you remember it will be a lot easier to go with the changed memory.

When you remember something, the memory is not "recalled" like on a computer, but recreated from scratch. You start with a specific event (that itself may or may not have happened, but it must be quite normal for it to happen so the predictor doesn't see it as too unlikely). Because external persons can both contribute and interfere with the recreation process it can be used to change memories (your mind doesn't separate multiple inputs, so if a person is talking when you're recalling, it influences the recall process). You want your memory to be accurate, spend a while with extremely limited inputs first.

Because of how the predictor works, it "synchronizes" with other people's predictors (nothing magical, it simply predicts what the other person's mind is doing and takes that into account). But that results in that if you have extreme uncertainty about an event and the person you're talking to feels very strongly about it, your mind will be quite likely to follow the other person's convictions.

Keep doing this, and you can convince someone they're a monster (note: requires that the interrogator believes that to be true, builds trust and avoids firing the "bullshit detector" and even then large changes require quite a bit of time)

There are a few more of these things that are quite normal, given that our minds copy others' behaviors, but people find extremely hard to believe. The one I have refused to believe for the longest time was that people who get abused, whether by a military, simply be economic situation, or even when kidnapped, initially want to get out. But if the situation persists, the no longer want the abuse to stop. They want to become the abuser (because that person is the person their mind most often gives attention to). For a behavior copy "machine", this is expected and normal. In psychology this simple fact has been known for centuries. Many other counterintuitive facts become easy to explain (e.g. why commercials work).

Did this moment actually happen previously and your remembering it again, or is a chemical reaction in your brain tricking you into thinking you've had this thought before?