Suggestibility’s Strong Influence on Behavior
How reliable are your memories? Before I took Cognitive Psych, I never considered this question. In fact, I assumed that most of what I remembered was true, even things from my early childhood. Now that I know about suggestibility, I have begun to second-guess what I know about many of my past experiences. Suggestibility occurs when, without realizing it, we include information from others in our memories. This can lead to changes in memories, and sometimes the creation of non- experienced, or “false” memories.
There are two basic types of suggestions. A personalized suggestion is one that indicates that something may have happened specifically to you in the past. General suggestions, on the other hand, suggest that something happened to many people in the past. For example, a personalized suggestion could involve your grandmother saying, “you always used to wear those green overalls when you came to visit me,” while a generalized suggestion may involve reading a magazine article that says green overalls were very popular among children in the late 1990s. Research has shown that personalized suggestions create false autobiographical memories, which can affect behavior. Memories are very important in guiding our behavior. For example, if you remember a negative event associated with a certain place, you are more likely to avoid that place in the future. Generalized suggestions guide behavior as well, but not through false memories. In this case, a person may hear that something happened to others in the past and adjust their behavior to avoid experiencing it. For example, if you learned that many people got sick from eating raw cookie dough, you might avoid sampling the batter when making cookies so as not to get sick yourself.
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