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Health, January 2006
Fake Memories May Change How Much You Eat
Turn up your nose: Planting false memories could help you skip extra-fattening foods.
Remember Total Recall, the movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to get false memories implanted about a pleasant vacation on Mars? The moral: Mess with reality, and things go wrong. That may have been the case on the silver screen, but it may not be true in real life. A report published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that false memories might be used to change how—and how much—you eat.
In the study, researchers tried to convince participants in two groups that strawberry ice cream made them sick during childhood; a third control group was not given the false memory. In addition to being told they’d had bad reactions to the ice cream, participants in the first group also read stories by others who’d gotten sick after eating the ice cream. Of this group, 22 percent said they believed the false memory and claimed they would avoid the flavor in the future. Members of the second group, instead of reading about other sufferers, were asked to recall their own childhood distresses—and the number of believers doubled; they, too, agreed they’d avoid strawberry ice cream.
The findings suggest that changing your recollections of the past might help improve your eating habits. Planting memories—negative ones about certain fattening foods, for instance, or positive ones of healthy foods like spinach—could make smart eating and weight management easier.
This research shows promising trends, but don’t rush to see a hypnotist yet. “We need to test whether the effects are long-lasting,” warns psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine
Fake Memories May Change How Much You Eat
Turn up your nose: Planting false memories could help you skip extra-fattening foods.
Remember Total Recall, the movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to get false memories implanted about a pleasant vacation on Mars? The moral: Mess with reality, and things go wrong. That may have been the case on the silver screen, but it may not be true in real life. A report published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that false memories might be used to change how—and how much—you eat.
In the study, researchers tried to convince participants in two groups that strawberry ice cream made them sick during childhood; a third control group was not given the false memory. In addition to being told they’d had bad reactions to the ice cream, participants in the first group also read stories by others who’d gotten sick after eating the ice cream. Of this group, 22 percent said they believed the false memory and claimed they would avoid the flavor in the future. Members of the second group, instead of reading about other sufferers, were asked to recall their own childhood distresses—and the number of believers doubled; they, too, agreed they’d avoid strawberry ice cream.
The findings suggest that changing your recollections of the past might help improve your eating habits. Planting memories—negative ones about certain fattening foods, for instance, or positive ones of healthy foods like spinach—could make smart eating and weight management easier.
This research shows promising trends, but don’t rush to see a hypnotist yet. “We need to test whether the effects are long-lasting,” warns psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine