About

Elizabeth F. Loftus is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, affiliated with the School of Social Ecology, the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, and Psychological Science. Her research primarily focuses on human memory, exploring how memories can be altered by post-event information such as facts, ideas, and suggestions. Her experiments have demonstrated that memories are susceptible to modification, which has significant implications for the legal field, where eyewitness testimony and memory play critical roles. Loftus's work extends into the broader fields of psychology and law, emphasizing the importance of understanding the malleability of human memory. She has made substantial contributions to the scientific community through her research, which has been recognized with numerous awards, including the APF Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Science and the William James Award. Her influence is also reflected in her numerous profiles, interviews, and articles in prominent publications, as well as her presentations such as a TED Talk at TEDGlobal 2013. Throughout her career, Loftus has been a leading figure in cognitive psychology, particularly in the study of human memory and its implications for law and society.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Law
• Internet privacy
• Public relations
• Sociology
• Psychiatry
• Medicine
• World Wide Web
• Advertising
• Business
• History
• Epistemology
• Applied psychology

Selected publications

• Remembering Dangerously: A critical look at “recovered” childhood memories in psychotherapy

  CrimRxiv · 2025-09-12

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Like the witch-hunt trials of old, people today are being accused and even imprisoned on “evidence” provided by memories from dreams and flashbacks—memories that didn’t exist before therapy. What is going on here? We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the hysteria and superstitious fervor of the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Men and women are being accused, tried, and convicted with no proof or evidence of guilt other than the word of the accuser. Even when the accusations involve numerous perpetrators, inflicting grievous wounds over many years, even decades, the accuser’s pointing finger of blame is enough to make believers of judges and juries. Individuals are being imprisoned on the “evidence” provided by memories that come back in dreams and flashbacks—memories that did not exist until a person wandered into therapy and was asked point-blank, “Were you ever sexually abused as a child?” And then begins the process of excavating the “repressed” memories through invasive therapeutic techniques, such as age regression, guided visualization, trance writing, dream work, body work, and hypnosis. (From the Introduction.)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fundamentals of Memory: Applications to Memory for Sexual Assault

  CrimRxiv · 2025-10-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Though well-established principles of memory operate for events of all sorts, sexual events typically bring up a host of rather unique issues concerning the vast array of relevant information to be remembered and the personal and situational contexts in which sexual events take place. This chapter reviews the effects of specific situational and personal contexts relevant in many sexual situations on the attentional and interpretive functions of memory: and further discusses some complexities regarding the effects of emotions and the role of trauma that have been insufficiently considered in the literature on memory for sexual assault.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Still Lost in the Mall—False Memories Happen and That's What Matters

  Applied Cognitive Psychology · 2025-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT For more than 25 years, psychologists have explored how people can develop rich false memories. Murphy et al. (2023) replicated the original “lost in the mall” study (Loftus and Pickrell 1995), demonstrating that 35% of participants developed false beliefs or memories. Andrews and Brewin (in press) reanalyzed Murphy et al.'s data, concluding that participants who developed false memories reported 25% of the suggested details and 50% of their reports were potentially real memories. Based on this, Andrews and Brewin posited that only 4% of Murphy et al.'s participants developed false memories. We take issue with Andrews and Brewin's conclusions. Given human memory is reconstructive, we should expect participants' reports to contain remnants of accurate memories, self or schematic knowledge, or speculation. Moreover, even low false memory rates can be practically important. What matters is that suggestive influences can lead to substantial memory distortions and even plant new events that had not occurred.

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• Clinical and Developmental Outcomes After 50 Years of Newborn Bloodspot Screening for Classical Galactosaemia in the Republic of Ireland

  JIMD Reports · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Classical Galactosaemia (CG) is an inborn error of carbohydrate metabolism. In untreated neonates, CG leads to a multi-organ toxicity with life-threatening symptoms. Newborn Screening for CG began in the Republic of Ireland in 1972. In Ireland, two forms of neonatal screening occur. High-risk infants are fed lactose-free/galactose-free formula until the result of their Beutler screening test on day 1. All other infants are fed as per parental preference and are screened on day three to five. While immediate or early implementation of a strict lactose-free diet together with medical interventions will usually address the acute medical complications, long-term complications are common. We reviewed retrospectively and anonymised the clinical outcomes of our CG cohort, derived from our hospital-based database. Patient demographic information, co-morbidities, developmental assessment results, and other relevant health indicators were analysed from birth to 18 years. Out of 217 patients, 95% of subjects were alive at 18 years of age. Common co-morbidities were speech and language difficulty (43.5%) and learning difficulty (25.5%). In this Irish cohort, Friedreich Ataxia is a genetically linked condition for a subgroup of CG individuals (7.9%). Our data demonstrate that while early diagnosis prevents mortality, it does not prevent developmental disorders, underpinning the neuro-developmental nature of CG. High-risk and routine newborn screening for CG have reduced the mortality rate of the disorder, and early medical and dietetic intervention is a success story. However, long-term medical and developmental challenges persist, and an early, proactive multidisciplinary approach may further mitigate the phenotype in CG patients diagnosed on NBS.

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• The misinformation effect: A contemporary replication and extension of Loftus et al. (1978) to investigate its underlying mechanisms.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 2025-09-29 · 2 citations

  article

  ; in Session 2, they viewed cowitness statements providing consistent, misleading or no traffic sign information. A binary memory test then assessed memory for the original traffic sign. Misled participants reported the correct sign less often than controls. Second, we investigated whether demand characteristics explain the misinformation effect, indicating strategic reporting rather than true memory distortion. With an identical procedure but a four-option memory test and confidence-based point betting, we still found the effect, though smaller. Hence, demand effects are not the sole driver of the misinformation effect. Third, we reversed the order of original and misleading events to differentiate between memory-based theories: Whether misinformation blocks or overwrites the original memory or is more often reported due to its higher activation. The binary memory test showed no misinformation effect, favoring single-trace or blocking explanations over activation-based theories. However, caution is warranted, as the results may also stem from the order rather than solely supporting single-trace or blocking mechanisms. In conclusion, our studies confirmed memory's susceptibility to misinformation, showing a robust effect partly driven by demand effects and largely, though not definitively, explained by single-trace or blocking mechanisms. This contemporary online paradigm provides a valuable tool for further study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Repressed Memories (of Sexual Abuse Against Minors) and Statutes of Limitations in Europe: Status Quo and Possible Alternatives

  Topics in Cognitive Science · 2024-01-31 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  One of the most heated debates in psychological science concerns the concept of repressed memory. We discuss how the debate on repressed memories continues to surface in legal settings, sometimes even to suggest avenues of legal reform. In the past years, several European countries have extended or abolished the statute of limitations for the prosecution of sexual crimes. Such statutes force legal actions (e.g., prosecution of sexual abuse) to be applied within a certain period of time. One of the reasons for the changes in statutes of limitations concerns the idea of repressed memory. We argue that from a psychological standpoint, these law reforms can be detrimental, particularly when they are done to endorse unfounded psychological theories. The validity of testimonies is compromised many years after the alleged facts, and abolishing the statute of limitations increases the chance that even more (false) recovered memories of abuse might enter the courtroom. We propose solutions to these changes such as establishing an independent expert committee evaluating claims of sexual abuse.

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• The Politics of Sexual Misconduct Allegations: A Memory Science Framework

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023 · 96 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Science is among humanity's greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance. Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups. This perspective helps explain both recent findings on scientific censorship and recent changes to scientific institutions, such as the use of harm-based criteria to evaluate research. We discuss unknowns surrounding the consequences of censorship and provide recommendations for improving transparency and accountability in scientific decision-making to enable the exploration of these unknowns. The benefits of censorship may sometimes outweigh costs. However, until costs and benefits are examined empirically, scholars on opposing sides of ongoing debates are left to quarrel based on competing values, assumptions, and intuitions.

  PublisherDOI

• Interpreting eyewitness confidence: Numeric, verbal, and graded verbal scales

  Applied Cognitive Psychology · 2023-11-11 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract In empirical research, eyewitnesses typically report their confidence numerically (e.g., “I'm 90% sure”). In contrast, in the field, lineup administrators typically ask witnesses to explain their confidence verbally, in the witness' own words (e.g., “I'm quite sure”). Across three studies, we explored how evaluators assess verbal confidence statements: both freely reported and reported using a graded verbal scale. Results showed wide variability in the interpretation of both kinds of confidence statements. Even when evaluating seemingly very strong statements of verbal confidence (e.g., “completely certain”) participants did not necessarily translate these statements into the strongest levels of numeric confidence. Variability in the interpretation of verbal confidence was particularly pronounced for low confidence statements. Moreover, participants preferred to report their confidence numerically rather than verbally. These results indicate the importance of documenting confidence verbatim at the time of the lineup so that the meaning of the witness' original confidence statement is preserved.

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• Misinformation are people susceptible to blatant error?

  Legal and Criminological Psychology · 2023-07-08

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel M. Bernstein

  Kwantlen Polytechnic University

  69 shared

• Edith Greene

  42 shared

• Cara Laney

  32 shared

• Maryanne Garry

  30 shared

• Bi Zhu

  Purdue University Fort Wayne

  24 shared

• Deborah Davis

  University of Nevada, Reno

  20 shared

• Henry Otgaar

  Maastricht University

  18 shared

• Lawrence Patihis

  17 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• APF Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science (20…
• William James Award & Acceptance Speech (2001)
• Winner of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for Online…