A behavioural impact of false memories: disordered thoughts.

The Consequences of False Memories
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-consequences-of-false-memories-2795350






   I have recently read an article, by Kendra Cherry, on a website that I had previously visited and analysed for a sense of reliability. The site, verywellmind.com, is not only reliable (I have explained why in my source evaluation document) but also incredibly useful for incite into general health and psychological queries.
   
   It changed the way I thought about false memories in a way as I‘d not really taken into account how their harm on an individual scale can be just as impactful as their societal implications (such as in the judicial system).

   This article with the above title discussed some of the repercussions an individual may face if they have experienced false memories. These examples can be scaled up and down depending on how extreme the false memories are.

Here is one interesting take from the information that I plan to utilise from this site:

‘False memories can impact your eating habits’
   This references a study completed by multiple psychologists such as Loftus and Geraerts named ‘Lasting False Beliefs and Their Behavioural Consequences’ which investigated what impact implanting a negative false memory of a certain food would have on a participant when presented with said food. 
   They found that those with the implanted false memories of the food had changed attitudes to it afterwards, showing a dislike. Though this seems like a very futile experiment with limited usefulness of the results, it‘s findings can be applied to varied situations. For example, if a child has implanted ideas surrounding lots of foods (e.g if they were constantly reminded of them falling sick after eating certain things despite there being no link),  into adolescence these associations may be a factor in disordered eating behaviours due to fears of certain foods as a result of negative false memories of such foods. 
 
   If this can be done for food, the same application can be transferred to lots of other aspects of life that often trigger mental health issues and disordered thought patterns. If a person conjures up a false memory of a certain place tied to bad memories- say if their parents were attacked in a shopping centre- they might hear this memory enough for them to associate it with their own memories and believe they themselves were attacked there. This may in turn cause anxiety when in similar places. 


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