Photography and Altering Old Memories

Something interesting when it comes to the use of photographs to recall memories came up in the research by Deryn Strange and colleagues. (2008) In this research, they found that 10 year old kids, who they deemed most capable of recalling events accurately, were able to be tricked into believing an event happened to them after looking at a photo of it, when in fact they had no involvement in the events surrounding these photos. Alternatively, they found that children could be convinced of something being fact after looking at a photo, when in reality, it was false. For example, the photo below is an old picture of James Dean, a celebrity from before the 60s. For those who are informed about who this person is, it’s obvious, however, what about those who don’t know who James Dean is. What if they were instead told that this was an old photo of another celebrity, or even a family member? They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, due to the age of the photo, and assuming they were told this by someone they trust, they might believe it to be someone else entirely. What Strange et al. prove is that photos are subjective, and people’s memories are prone to altering events so that they make sense, even if they never actually occurred.