Study Shows You Can Convince People They Falsely Committed A Crime

It's not actually that hard to make some people believe they committed a crime that never happened. New findings published in the journal Association for Psychological Science found that many developed a false memory of the crime.

For the study, researchers interviewed 60 innocent students about their role in a series of crimes that they were not involved in. The students were brought to a lab for three 40-minute interviews that were evenly spaced out over the course of three weeks. Primary caregivers of the students were required to fill out a questionnaire that discussed specific events the students may have experienced from ages 11 to 14.

Findings revealed that 71 percent of the students who were falsely accused of committing crime as a teenager were classified as having developed a false sense of memory. Many of the crimes involved contact with the police due to a assault or theft.

Another 76 percent of the students who were accused of emotional natured crimes also developed this false sense.

"In such circumstances, inherently fallible and reconstructive memory processes can quite readily generate false recollections with astonishing realism," added lead study author Julia Shaw, in a news release. "In these sessions we had some participants recalling incredibly vivid details and re-enacting crimes they never committed."

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