Elizabeth Loftus

Born Elizabeth Fishman on October 16, 1944, Loftus grew up in a Jewish family in Bel Air, California. Her father (Sidney Fishman) was a doctor and her mother (Rebecca Fishman) a librarian. When Loftus was 14 years old, her mother drowned. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1966, followed by a master's and PhD in mathematical psychology from Stanford University in 1967 and 1970 respectively. Her thesis was entitled "An Analysis of the Structural Variables That Determine Problem-Solving Difficulty on a Computer-Based Teletype". == Career ==

1970 to 1989 From 1970 to 1973, Loftus was employed as a cognitive psychologist at the New School for Social Research in New York City, Her findings were that the mean estimates of the speeds were 32 mph when the question was phrased as the speed that the cars "collided", 34 mph when the question was phrased as "hit each other" instead, and 41 mph when the question was phrased as "smashed each other". Loftus concluded that "these results are consistent with the view that the questions asked subsequent to an event can cause a reconstruction in one's memory of that event". Around this time, Loftus's undergraduate student Jim Coan developed the "lost in the mall" technique. This technique involved Coan giving his younger brother three stories of actual events from his childhood, plus a false story about the brother being lost in a mall. The younger brother believed all stories to be true and provided further details of the false story. and Kenneth Pope has argued she overgeneralized the findings to draw conclusions about false memories and therapeutic techniques. A later study by Loftus (involving 332 undergraduate students who received course credit for participating) found that approximately one third of students accepted as true a false story about having their ear licked by a drug-addled Pluto character during a childhood visit to Disneyland. Following the publication of these studies, armed guards accompanied Loftus at lectures. Also, Loftus had previously received death threats after the publication of her 1994 book The Myth of Repressed Memory. The same year, Loftus received an In Praise of Reason award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In the 1997 New Hampshire vs Joel Hungerford case, the judge set strict conditions on the admissibility of recovered memory testimony. 1997 to 2000 In 1997, psychiatrists David Corwin and Erna Olafson published a case study of a recovered memory of apparently genuine childhood sexual abuse, which became known as the Jane Doe case. Loftus and Melvin Guyer interviewed Jane's stepmother who revealed that she was involved in building a case against Jane's mother in a battle for custody of Jane. The university put Loftus under investigation, including confiscating her files. The investigation lasted for 21 months, during which time Loftus was not allowed to share her findings. Loftus's invitation to give the keynote address at the New Zealand Psychological Society's conference in August 2000 provoked the society's director of scientific affairs, John Read, to resign from his position and for conference attendees to distribute materials critical of Loftus's work. Loftus stated that she "didn't wear her best jacket" to give her address for "fear of flying tomatoes". 2001 to present By 2001, Loftus had become disappointed with the University of Washington's unwillingness to stand by her during the controversy involving the Jane Doe case, and she left the university. From 2001 to 2003, Loftus worked for the University of California, Irvine, (UCI) as a distinguished professor in the department of Criminology, Law and Society and the department of Psychological Science. She was also a fellow in the UCI Department of Cognitive Sciences and the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Her work included an experiment on 131 undergraduate students in relation to preferences for cookies and strawberry ice cream. In 2002, Loftus was ranked 58th in the Review of General Psychologys list of the 100 most influential psychological researchers of the 20th century. The following year, Loftus received the award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA). Also in 2003, Loftus was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, the Taus v. Loftus case in the Supreme Court of California saw Loftus, Melvin J. Guyer and Skeptical Inquirer magazine being sued by Nicole Taus regarding the article they published about her case. In August 2007, the remaining claim was withdrawn by Taus, after reaching an agreement that Loftus's insurance company would pay a settlement of $7,500 to Nicole Taus. The following year, Loftus published her studies on the case. In 2004, she attempted to implant a false memory in Alan Alda on Scientific American Frontiers. Alda did not accept the false memory of becoming sick as a child from eating a hard-boiled egg. Loftus stated that Alda's questionnaire self-correction from "definitely didn't happen" to "happened" supported the false memory theory. The variance in Alda's pre- and post-experiment responses was not stated. Loftus attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium in November 2006. In 2005, she received the Grawemeyer Award in psychology from the University of Louisville. In 2009, she received the Joseph Priestley Award presented by Dickinson College. In 2010, she received the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 2011 to , Loftus was on the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Loftus was a keynote speaker at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in 2011. In June 2013, Loftus presented at the TEDGlobal Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was also the keynote speaker at the 2013 Psychonomic Society annual meeting. In 2015, Loftus received an honorary doctorate in psychology from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2016, Loftus received the John Maddox Prize, In 2018, she won the Western Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and the University College Dublin's Ulysses Medal. In 2022, Loftus made Research.com's list of world’s top female scientists, ranking at No. 451 in the United States. == The recovered memory / false memory debate ==

Elizabeth Loftus has been an active participant in controversies over memory since the last decades of the 20th century, known as the recovered memory / false memory debate, or as the "Memory Wars" (as in the title of the book The Memory Wars). Loftus was a member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. She along with Peter Freyd, Pamela Freyd and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation have argued that there is sufficient experimental evidence that people distort their memories, that human memory is not usually faithful to objective facts, and that false memories can be implanted in other people through suggestion and recovered-memory therapy. Thus, in many or most cases, the memories of childhood abuse that people recover in psychotherapy, and which are sometimes presented in court, are false memories. Other scholars and specialists including Bessel van der Kolk, Lenore Terr, Jennifer Freyd and Linda Williams argue that there are well-documented cases of forgetting and later remembering traumatic events that occurred during childhood or adulthood by people in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Elizabeth Loftus has argued that the concept of memory inhibition or repression is inadequate and that there is no such thing as repressed and later recovered memories of traumatic events. Loftus criticizes recovered-memory therapy and in particular Freud's psychoanalysis for spreading these inadequate concepts. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and the Eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) do not use the concept of repression but that of dissociative amnesia. Dissociative amnesia is the forgetfulness due to psychological causes, including stress, of certain autobiographical events, which can cover short or long periods. The DSM-5 includes dissociative amnesia as a disorder (a clinical syndrome) and also as a symptom (among others) of post-traumatic stress disorder. In 1977 Florence Rush argued that Freud's theory about the Oedipus complex was created to cover up real cases of sexual abuse committed by adults against children. According to this, Freud changed his initially posited seduction theory because he wanted to hide the reality of the traumas that his patients would have suffered. In 1984 Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson published The Assault on Truth, where, like Rush, he argues that Freud covered up the reality of sexual abuse. Drawing on Rush and Masson, Susie Orbach argues that Freud replaced his theory of seduction and childhood sexual trauma with the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud changed his views and decided that his patients' memories of sexual abuse were actually imaginary, neurotic fantasies of unrealized events and Oedipal wishes. This change in Freudian theory was criticized by Sandor Ferenczi and John Bowlby among other mental health specialists. Phil Mollon claims that Freud was ahead of his time and that the new findings on false memory syndrome confirm the claims Freud made a century ago about imaginary memories. On the other hand, in addition to Elizabeth Loftus, several reputable modern psychologists and psychiatrists, including Ulric Neisser, Julia Shaw and Daniel Schacter agree that human memory is usually not true to the facts. The book edited by Robert Belli True and False Recovered Memories. Toward a Reconciliation of the Debate (2012) tries to make a synthesis that takes into account the part of truth and reason that both parts have in the debate. == Involvement in legal cases ==

Loftus has testified in over 300 cases, and consulted on many more. • Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 trial for sex-trafficking: Loftus testified for the defense during Maxwell's trial regarding sex trafficking of under-age girls for Jeffrey Epstein. This was the first case where Loftus claimed that the potential for financial rewards could cause a human brain to create a false traumatic memory; when questioned about the basis of the theory by the jury, Loftus stated "I am not aware of any studies on that, but based on my research, it's definitely plausible." • Harvey Weinstein's 2020 trial for rape and sexual assault: Loftus testified for the defense during Weinstein's trial for sexual assault of two women. == Personal life ==

From 1968 to 1991, Elizabeth was married to fellow psychologist Geoffrey Loftus. == Publications ==

Loftus has written or co-authored many journal articles and books, including the 1994 book titled The Myth of Repressed Memory. ==References==