Discussion Questions, D&M Ch 8

1 - memory is highly suggestible. I think that there are limits to what you can make people believe about the past. The more illogical the story, or inconsistent it is, the more likely people are to disagree or reject the attempt to implant a memory. If the person has some specific memory that is not consistent with the tale, it may stick out at them and give them a thread to pull on until the suggested nature of the memory is unraveled. I also think that people with particularly strong memories or skeptical minds would be more resistant to implanted memories.

2 - Failing to remember an interrogator under a high stress situation was actually not a surprising result to me -- under stress, what you see and perceive changes a great deal. You may not be focused in on recalling a broad general face image or able to easily make a mental reproduction of what that same face might look like on the street or in a mugshot instead of screaming at you. After a trauma, I think the brain is also highly susceptible to manipulation -- you want to help the police, you are seeking reassurance, your flashes of memory may be so full of gaps that anything familiar seems like a thing to hold on to. Carefully focusing on the details needed to make a later identification, in context, and then generating them spontaneously in response to the very first question you get on the topic, seems like the best way to be confident of your recollection. One experimental design that might support this would be to generate stress through sports or games -- something that people would be comfortable and would pass ethics/IRB. For example, bet $100 on a football game, then ask questions about the participants, versus $5 on the game.