Brian Williams has recently been the subject of headlines all over news stations and publications. Williams, who claimed he was in an aircraft in 2003 that had been hit with a grenade, has been seemingly caught in a web of lies. It turns out that he was actually in a helicopter that was possibly an hour away from the actual one hit. Most people have been quick to relinquish their support of Brian Williams and call him a liar, but there is a theory circulated that Williams was a victim to a false memory.
False memory is the psychological phenomenon in which a person recalls an event that did not actually happen and believes that certain details and stories are the truth when they, in fact, are altered or false. False memory is especially common to people who are more gullible and susceptible to suggestion. Williams has told various versions of his story over the years, so his case has been looked at through this lens as an alternative theory.
“I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft from the other,” Williams stated.
Usually, with false memory, there are external interventions that cause memories to be altered, like someone else telling a different version or insisting that something happened to them. For example, as part of a study on false memory, Elizabeth Loftus and Jacqueline Pickrell were able to convince people that they were lost in shopping malls as children. However, Brian Williams’ story had no outside mediation – no one persuaded him into believing that he actually got shot at – and it seems the story was changed as he retold it.
Memories are scientifically proved. They don’t live as complete knowledge, stored in one specific part of our brains. Instead they exist as partly reconstructions rather than perfect reproductions. Because they are never completely finalized, it is understandable that they can be manipulated and changed. Lies and false memories are often misinterpreted because they have so much in common, and a study from the Medical Hypothesis points out some similarities: “Both false memories and confabulations are facilitated by the need for integrated and complete memories, the familiarity of the material, and the presence of self-relevant or autobiographical content.” As lies are integrated into one’s memory or as other stories and sources influence the original memory, the falsities come to feel like the truth. After someone experiences false memory, there won’t be a difference between lies and reality, the two will instead morph to create a new truth that the person wholeheartedly.
“The heroic stories are easier to latch on to and become memories,” said Elizabeth Loftus, a professor and memory expert.
There are many dangers of false memory, and in addition, it is a very common occurrence. With scientific knowledge developing more and more about it, even if it were true, the burden would most likely not be lifted off of Brian Williams. Perhaps he kept telling himself that what he experienced was more heroic than what actually happened, so he forgot about what really happened. Whether Williams was actually a victim to false memory will continue to remain a mystery, but it still doesn’t excuse what happened versus what was told.