A memory can be planted

People can be led to remember, with confidence and with sensory detail, an event that never happened.

Elizabeth Loftus and Jacqueline Pickrell told adult subjects about several childhood events, one of which — being lost in a shopping mall — had been invented with the help of a family member who confirmed it never occurred. About a quarter of the subjects, in the original study, came to 'remember' the event, adding details the interviewers had never supplied.

Later work has planted richer false memories: hot-air balloon rides, committing a crime as a teenager. The rates vary with the method and the person. The existence of the effect does not. Memory is a reconstruction, which this library already says, and the reconstruction will accept outside material and then experience it as recall.