Hindsight is easier than foresight
What would you have decided? An offender with diminished culpability is in forensic detention. The head physician at the hospital approves a more relaxed regime for him: He is let out on parole and meets with his partner. An argument breaks out between the two, the man goes into hiding for six months and commits several robberies in which two women are killed. Now a judge has to decide whether the doctor acted negligently when he allowed the conditional release. It is exactly this moment that social psychologist Prof. Oeberst is particularly interested in. Because this is where judges may display the momentous “hindsight bias”. In hindsight, we think it was quite likely, predictable, almost inevitable that the man would relapse. “We call this the hindsight perspective,” Oeberst explains. ” We perceive information very selectively in retrospect and ignore aspects that might have suggested another outcome. But this perception is unfair. That’s why judges are supposed to ignore the outcome. However, people are really bad at that.”
Oeberst and a colleague tested with judges in a training course just how difficult this is. They were all presented with the same scenario. While one part of the group was told the outcome of the case, the other was given a version that only told the story up to the doctor’s decision. Both were asked to assess the risk of relapses. They came to different conclusions. Those who had read the whole case were more likely to view the doctor’s behavior as criminal than those who had received the shortened version. “The so-called hindsight bias is a very robust effect that systematically causes overly harsh judgments,” Oeberst explains. But how can we prevent this error, which is unlikely to be made in bad faith? “The advice would be to apply the so-called consider-the-opposite strategy and think carefully about what would have spoken for an alternative outcome.” Forensic psychiatrists, who only receive the information that the head physician had when he took his decision, could also be commissioned.
Aileen Oeberst completed her doctorate in Osnabrück and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Leibniz Institut für Wissensmedien in Tübingen. She was Junior Professor of Forensic Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz from 2016. In 2019, she became Professor of Psychology at the FernUniversität in Hagen. There, she investigated various errors of that kind, which she believes can all be summarized in a “basic formula”: People generally process information in such a way that it confirms their own beliefs. But what can we do to prevent revolving around ourselves? “One way is certainly to become aware of our beliefs and to question them time and again,” she says.
You won’t forget traumatic experiences
Memories of events that never took place can be just as serious as hindsight bias. At FernUni Hagen, Oeberst and a colleague conducted studies on false memories. The researchers “implanted” false childhood memories in test subjects in order to find out in a second step whether these could be corrected. They were even able to convince the test subjects’ parents to participate. They provided information about events their children had and had not experienced between the age of four and 14. In three interviews, a staff member then asked the adult children about their memories of four negative, but not traumatic, events: for example, that they got lost during a vacation as a child or had been attacked by a dog. Of these four events, however, the test subjects had actually experienced only two; two, on the other hand, had not taken place. In fact, about half of the subjects really believed in the events they did not experience after a short time and also developed their own memories of them. When the researchers explained to the test subjects that memories could be false, many of them realized that they had been let on. The others were eventually made aware by psychologists.
This was the first study, which tried to reverse false autobiographic memories, Prof. Oeberst says. “However, we still have to be very careful with the results. Telling people that false memories exist is probably not as effective in the real world as it is in the lab. In real-world cases, we are also dealing with a very long suggestion process.” In fact, suggestions such as those made by the interviewer in Oeberst’s lab are most likely to occur in psychotherapy sessions where therapists and/or clients are convinced that repressed childhood traumas, such as sexual abuse, are the causes of current suffering. “There is no convincing evidence for the idea of repression,” the memory expert explains. “On the contrary, research shows that we remember emotional, vital, and unusual events particularly well. It would also not be beneficial from an evolutionary biology point of view if we could not remember the perpetrator.” Other memory researchers once put it like this, “You don’t forget abuse.” At the same time, this does not mean that those affected by sexual abuse still remember every detail. “But many traumatized people cannot get rid of images of the traumatic event. Studies with Holocaust survivors, soldiers in combat missions, or children who had to witness the murder of a parent show that very clearly.”
Repression is an extremely successful idea that the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, introduced to the world. Although he later revised it, the idea still persists, as a recent survey of therapists confirms: As many as 76% of behavioral therapists stated that they had suspected repressed childhood experiences as the cause of clients’ symptoms, even though the procedure is not actually based on the assumption of repression. However, if therapists assume that current problems could be caused by a repressed childhood trauma, they may search for it. “They often don’t realize where suggestion begins. Sometimes it is simply the way you ask a question or the fact that you repeat it. It is therefore imperative that therapists accept when somebody says, 'I don't remember that'.”
Ritual child abuse – a difficult field for memory research
The topic provokes heated discussions because the belief in repression is so widespread. Especially when it comes to ritual child abuse, i.e., targeted and severe physical, psychological, and sexual violence in destructive groups that allegedly work with mind control techniques. They are said to deliberately split people into different personalities and program individual subpersonalities for abuse. Memory researcher Oeberst is not at all sure whether the phenomenon even exists. “The only evidence are reports from self-defined victims. We are talking about networks that are said to have committed so many and such horrific crimes over the years that it is hard to imagine that there are no forensic traces.” Those affected often have their own ideas as to why traces are missing.
According to Prof. Oeberst, these resemble conspiracy theories. “The statements of those affected are also problematic because the majority of them state that the abuse took place in their earliest childhood. However, we cannot remember the first two years of our lives at all. We may have early memories from the third to sixth year of our lives, but they are often based on photos or stories from our parents, for example.” Many of those affected only became aware of the ritual abuse in their mid to late 20s. “That is not compatible with the findings of memory psychology.”
In many cases, perpetrators are said to have used “mind control”, but this is also unconvincing in the professor's view. “So far, no one has been able to prove scientifically that this really works.” Even years of investigations by the FBI led to the conclusion that there is no evidence for such claims. “From the perspective of memory research, the reports of those affected by ritual sexual abuse with mind control are implausible,” Oeberst summarizes. It is much more likely that these are false memories in the context of therapy. A 2018 study with 150 self-defined victims shows that they had had an average of 369 therapy sessions.
Even though Prof. Oeberst is convinced that such suggestions are made in good faith in most cases because therapists are convinced that they are uncovering existing injustice, the consequences are nevertheless immense. “If I go to therapy for depression or an anxiety disorder and I am told that I was sexually abused as a child, this can change a lot dramatically.” The patients’ view of their previous lives changes fundamentally, which often has a serious impact on their family and working lives. False memories are therefore a very difficult field. “We memory researchers are sometimes accused of discrediting victims of abuse in general and protecting perpetrators,” she says.
Identifying false memories
Therefore, she finds it all the more important to continue researching human memory and analyzing how we can distinguish between false and true memories, which are, in fact, very similar. “The main difference is that you haven’t always had the false ones. It is a red flag if I only have memories of something after going to therapy or reading a guide,” Oeberst explains.
This is why courts, and psychological experts in particular, look at the origin and development of a testimony when it comes to the credibility of a memory. If “a dark shadow” later becomes a detailed memory, this should be a cause for concern, Prof. Oeberst says. “In most cases, it is then one person’s word against another’s, which makes credibility so important. Only if I can reliably rule out that a statement is based on suggestion or is fictitious, can I conclude that it is credible.” At the same time, Prof. Oeberst emphasizes that the opposite happens much more often: people were actually victims of sexual abuse, but this cannot be proven with certainty, and so the perpetrators are not convicted.
Oeberst is a member of the expert group “Therapy and Credibility” of the German Federal Ministry of Justice, which developed a guideline for legal practice. Since then, she has been asking herself what we expect from memory from a legal perspective and whether these expectations are justified from an empirical point of view. How consistent do statements have to be? Must victims of sexual violence be able to remember exact body positions for their statements to be considered credible? In order to investigate these questions, the researcher wants to systematically analyze judgments of the Federal Court of Justice and psychological expert reports on testimonies and compare them with empirical findings. She also wants to conduct studies on the subject. The psychologist thus has many plans in Potsdam to find out more about human errors.
Aileen Oeberst studied at the universities of Leipzig and Cagliarì. Since 2024, she has been Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Potsdam.
This text (in german language) was published in the university magazine Portal - Zwei 2024 „Europa“ (PDF).