Memories are easily manipulated that in as little as three hours a person can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened. Innocent people can be fooled into believing they have carried out a violent crime that never took place, a study has revealed.
Psychologists found that during just three hours of interviews, adults could be convinced they had perpetrated a theft, an assault, or even attacked somebody with a weapon when they were a teenager.
Using suggestive memory-retrieval techniques, the researchers were able to trick 70 per cent of the participants into believing they had committed an offence. The effect was so strong that the participants ended up providing detailed descriptions of things that had never actually taken place.
