People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#51

Post by Timon3 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #29

localplume wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares right? I…

If you google Paris and you get an ad for a hotel, that isn't brainwashing. It's fun to be radical but let's stay grounded here.

Come on, we all know that marketing goes further than that. Very simple example to disprove your thought-ending comment:

I am a hypothetical gun shop owner and want to increase sales, so I put up ads that talk about the need to defend against high crime rates onto any search that might be related to the local area, anything about security, anything for new renters and owners. Without telling people that the area has a high crime rate, people will start to believe that it does, and that they need to protect themselves.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#52

Post by Timon3 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

canjobear wrote: post #48

Timon3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose we differentiate between students "playing along" and students really having false memories? Couldn't I discard any psychological study by saying "well, the participants could have faked it", since it's by definition not falsifiable (any test could also be faked)?

You should indeed be extremely skeptical of studies whose only dependent variable is a voluntary participant response and where the participant has an incentive to tell the experimenter what they think they want to hear (for example, to make the experiment end faster).

How would you propose, in this specific study, they verify what you want? Please be specific regarding what questions you want asked, when they should be asked, and how these questions can't be discarded by saying "well, they could be faking it".

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#53

Post by kneebonian » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

> The researchers identified a total of 60 students who had not been involved in any of the crimes designated as false memory targets in the study and who otherwise met the study criteria. These students were brought to the lab for three 40-minute interviews that took place about a week apart.

Psychology is the study of 18-25 year old undergrads.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#54

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #36

ekianjo wrote: post #23

> Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. It's been known for like dozens of years at least. What happened in soviet Russia and in China during the cultural revolution was all about making people convinced that they had committed crimes and that they deserved their p…

Unfortunately you do not have to look to the past or the other side of the globe to find an epidemic of false confessions.

Indeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving a truly fair trial to the vast majority of the accused. The system would grind to a halt without the vast majority of cases ending in plea bargains, and we have pretty good reasons to suspect that common police interrogation tactics (often functionally indistinguishable from psychological abuse) tend to produce false confessions [1] [2].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-confessions...

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#55

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

kneebonian wrote: post #53

> The researchers identified a total of 60 students who had not been involved in any of the crimes designated as false memory targets in the study and who otherwise met the study criteria. These students were brought to the lab for three 40-minute interviews that took place about a week apart. Psychology is the study of 18-25 year old undergrads.

[deleted]

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#56

Post by canjobear » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

Timon3 wrote: post #52

canjobear wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should indeed be extremely skeptical of studies whose only dependent variable is a voluntary participant response and where the participant has an incentive to tell the experimenter what they think they want to hear (for example, to make the experiment end faster).

How would you propose, in this specific study, they verify what you want? Please be specific regarding what questions you want asked, when they should be asked, and how these questions can't be discarded by saying "well, they could be faking it".

I think this whole experimental paradigm is inherently unfixable.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#57

Post by canjobear » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #50

canjobear wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should indeed be extremely skeptical of studies whose only dependent variable is a voluntary participant response and where the participant has an incentive to tell the experimenter what they think they want to hear (for example, to make the experiment end faster).

Except in this case for the follow up interviews there was no incentive to lie.

They’re incentivized to tell the experimenters what they want to hear so they can get paid and go home faster.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#58

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

Timon3 wrote: post #44

yosito wrote: post #28

> The fact that the students appeared to internalize the false events to the extent that they did highlights the fundamental malleability of memory This seems like a bit of a leap to assume that this is about malleability rather than just lying to researchers and saying what they feel is expected. I could very easily imagine myself playing along with someone trying to convince me of false memories just because I don'…

How would you propose we differentiate between students "playing along" and students really having false memories? Couldn't I discard any psychological study by saying "well, the participants could have faked it", since it's by definition not falsifiable (any test could also be faked)?

Yes, you could discard any study under that rationale among others. And the interesting thing is you'd likely be far more 'informed' for doing so. Social psychology has the lowest replication rate of any field. You're looking at top journals with replication rates in the twenties. [1]

What this means is that if you were to take any give study in social psychology, and simply assume it was 'wrong' (either saying the opposite of the truth, or claiming a statistically significant effect when there really is none), then you'd, on average, be dramatically more 'informed' than somebody taking the studies at face value. [2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psycholo...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#59

Post by ackbar03 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #39

yosito wrote: post #28

> The fact that the students appeared to internalize the false events to the extent that they did highlights the fundamental malleability of memory This seems like a bit of a leap to assume that this is about malleability rather than just lying to researchers and saying what they feel is expected. I could very easily imagine myself playing along with someone trying to convince me of false memories just because I don'…

Strong bias on HN about replication. But the ability to implant false memories has been widely researched and replicated. This isn't a stretch. Memory is very fallible.

Exactly. Leonardo Dicaprio did it

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#60

Post by j16sdiz » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #42

Aerroon wrote: post #26

I wonder if this is why people can become angry and aggressive when you accuse them of something. That would provide a natural defense against this kind of suggestibility. It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they would overpower you, but a few thousand years ago? I think it could've worked.

>It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they would overpower you Never go into a police interrogation without a lawyer regardless of innocence or guilt. That's our only counter today.

Only if you can get a lawyer.

In many parts of the world, you can't.