The American Philosophical Society has awarded its 2020 Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology to noted psychologist and CSI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus “in recognition of her demonstrations that memories are generally altered, false memories can be implanted, and the changes in law and therapy this knowledge has caused.”
“Of all the world’s cognitive scientists,” the Society wrote in its honor, “Elizabeth Loftus has carried out research that has had the strongest and most important impact upon society.”
Loftus is Distinguished Professor and member of Psychological Science, Criminology Law and Society, Cognitive Science, and the School of Law at the University of California at Irvine.
“Her experiments reveal how memories can be changed by things that we experience, that we rehearse after the fact, and that we are told,” the extended citation from the Society says.
She is the world’s authority on the field known as false memory. She has shown how suggestions after a memory has formed can alter that memory, research that has produced growing changes in the way that police interrogations are carried out, so that initially uncertain memories are not transformed into certain ones. Even more startling, she has shown how strong, vivid and compelling memories can be formed for personal experiences that never happened.
Other research by Loftus has demonstrated uncertainties and ambiguities inherent in many instances of eyewitness testimony, “leading to gradual change and reform in the fundamental bases of our legal system.”
The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in “three deeply significant scholarly fields,” the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology, and history of science.
The Society also noted that “it is especially appropriate for Elizabeth Loftus to receive this Prize because Pat Suppes was Dr. Loftus’s thesis advisor. If Pat were living today he would be ecstatic to see Elizabeth receive this award.”
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In related news, the New Yorker has recently published a lengthy and deeply reported personal profile of Loftus and her work and some of the ensuing controversies. Initially titled “How Elizabeth Loftus Changed the Meaning of Memory,” the eleven-page article by Rachel Aviv appeared online March 29, 2021, and then was published in the April 5 New Yorker under the title “Past Imperfect.”