How accurate are our memories? Not as accurate as we’d like to think, especially when it comes to political events.

This week, NPR’s Marketplace looked at the work of Elizabeth Loftus, a University of California, Irvine, memory expert who recently co-authored a Nature Neuroscience commentary on memory and the law with CLBB faculty member Daniel Schacter.  Loftus’ work shows just how easily we can be led to “remember” events that never happened. All you have to do is show someone a doctored photograph. These false memories become all the more intense when political beliefs are factored in — Democrats are more likely to falsely remember events that show Republicans in a bad light, and vice-versa.

This leads Stephen Dubner to wonder: can Washington, D.C.’s partisan gridlock be solved by a few carefully doctored photographs?

Source: NPR’s Marketplace