Almost a year ago, I posted this rather "amusing" but serious study on memory recall. The researcher tried to suggest to the participants that on their visit to Disneyland, they actually saw and shook hands with Bugs Bunny, something that would not have occurred since Bugs is a Warner Brothers character (although not impossible since Bugs did appear on Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"). The study showed that in a percentage of the participants, they could implant such false memory simply via suggesting the event.
I have to say that not everyone is convinced of this study. I found this webpage that was from 2003 that produced a number of questions regarding the study. In particular, this author questions how the study was done, and whether there are other explanation, beyond just implanted memory, on why there are participants who thought they saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. One possible explanation was that these participants actually saw a rabbit character, but didn't actually know if it was Bugs Bunny or not and just assumed it was. She argued that most people can't actually tell one character from another, especially on a non-main character such as a rabbit.
I'm guessing there's some truth to that. For those of us who are big Disney fans, we tend to remember and know who the characters are, and it would be difficult to think that such fans would mistakenly recall meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. If that really occurred, it would have been BIG news and would have been all over the fans website already. So only those who are not really big Disney fans would make that kind of a mistake, and that would make them even more likely to not recognize one character over another. After all, how many times have I heard someone referred to "Chip 'N Dale" as Alvin and the Chipmunks?
Still, this makes for an amusing reading involving Disney theme parks at the center of a psychology research.
Zz.
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