Elizabeth Loftus

Elizabeth F. Loftus (born 1944) is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect, false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies.

Loftus's research includes the effects of phrasing on the perceptions of automobile crashes, the "lost in the mall" technique and the manipulation of food preferences through the use of false memories.

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".

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

From 1970 to 1973, Loftus was employed as a cognitive psychologist at the New School for Social Research in New York City, after becoming dissatisfied with university work such as calibrating math and word problems for fifth-grade students.

At the time, she had also been investigating semantic memory with Professor Jonathan Freedman at Stanford University.

Loftus was employed at the University of Washington from 1973 to 2001, initially as an assistant professor.

She shifted from laboratory work to using "real world" situations of criminal court cases.

Around this time, the United States Department of Transportation was offering funding for research into car crashes.

Loftus's first experiment in this area involved showing 45 students videos of car crashes and then asking the students to estimate the speed of the car.

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".

In 1974, Loftus published two articles with her observations about the conflicting eyewitness accounts in a particular murder trial and about the reliability of witness testimony in general.

This resulted in several lawyers contacting her about current cases, beginning her career of paid work providing advice to lawyers.

Early attempts for Loftus to act as an expert witness for these lawyers were deemed inadmissible by judges, however in June 1975 Loftus presented the first expert witness testimony in Washington State on the topic of eyewitness identification.

In 1990, George Franklin was on trial for murdering a young girl 20 years prior.

The prosecution's evidence included eyewitness testimony from Franklin's daughter that she had witnessed the murder, based on a recovered memory which was unearthed during a therapy session a year before the trial.

The defense attorney had a theory that the daughter had never seen the crime and that the testimony was based on a false memory.

Loftus was employed by the attorney to provide expert testimony in support of this theory.

Loftus referred to an experiment where she showed people video of a crime and then an incorrect television news report about the crime.

Afterwards, the viewers had mixed up some events from the original video with those in the news report.

Loftus argued that the same must have happened to Franklin's daughter, causing a "memory" of an event that she hadn't witnessed.

However, the prosecutor forced Loftus to admit that she had never studied memories like those of Franklin's daughter.

Loftus's studies found that people could misidentify random perpetrators, not that they could mistakenly accuse their own fathers.

It was also not proven that memories could be wholly invented, rather than altered.

The prosecution was successful and Franklin was convicted, though the conviction was later overturned on appeal and the prosecution declined to retry Franklin.

In 1991 there were several high-profile court cases of people having recovered memories of having been molested by their parents, which gained Loftus's attention.

She read through several then-current psychology books (The Courage to Heal) which instructed women and therapists in methods of recovering "lost" memories of sexual abuse, and urging therapists to query their clients about childhood incest.

Also in 1991, Loftus was deemed an honorary fellow of the British Psychological Society.

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.

In the Jane Doe case that began in 1997, Loftus and Melvin J. Guyer revealed serious concerns about the background and validity of the initial research.

She has also served on the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was a keynote speaker at the British Psychological Society's 2011 annual conference.

As well as her scientific work, Loftus has provided expert testimony or consultation for lawyers in over 300 court cases, including for the legal teams of Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson, Angelo Buono and Robert Durst.

She has also written many books, including The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories & Allegations of Sexual Abuse and Witness for the Defense.