Elizabeth Loftus: Bringing Psychology and the Legal System Together

ELIZABETH LOFTUS:

Bringing Psychology and the Legal System Together

Coni Park

Concordia University – Nebraska

ELIZABETH LOFTUS: Bringing Psychology and the Legal System Together

        Gaining a better understanding of the formation of memories in the human mind as well as how memories as well as how easily memories can be altered by leading suggestions or misinformation is what gave Elizabeth Loftus a foot in the door to the legal system.  This American cognitive psychologist has become one of the foremost experts on the malleability of the human memory and the applications that has within forensic and legal settings. Her extensive laboratory research gave her a starting point for her applications of the Misinformation Effect, her Eyewitness Memory studies, and False Memory Development, including the accuracy of recovered memories.  

Background and Family History

        Elizabeth Loftus was born October 16, 1944 to Sidney and Rebecca Fishman in Los Angeles, California.  Her father, Sidney was a doctor for the United States Army and her mother, Rebecca was a librarian (Bower, 2007).  At the young age of 14, her mother drown in a swimming pool (Berton, 2009).  During a family gathering some 20 years after her mother’s death, an uncle mentioned to Loftus that she had been the one who found her mother dead in the swimming pool.  At that point, a flood of memories started coming to her about the incident and being there when her mother died. A few days later, her older brother called her to make sure that she knew that the truth was that another uncle had found their mother, not her.  This personal event fueled her desire to study how easily memories can be created or manipulated by the suggestions of others.

        In 1966, Loftus received her Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She graduated with highest honors. Interestingly, she started her college career with the intention to become a secondary mathematics teacher but once she discovered psychology, she was drawn in to the study of the human mind. Shortly after completing her B.A., she began graduate school at Stanford University.  In 1967, she received her Master of Arts and in 1970 she received her PhD, both in mathematical psychology.  Her doctoral dissertation was “An Analysis of the Structural Variable That Determine Problem-Solving Difficulty on a Computer-Based Teletype” (Loftus, 2007). While at Stanford, she married a fellow psychology student by the name of Geoffrey Loftus.  Their marriage lasted from 1968 until 1991.  Although they divorced in 1991, she chose to keep his name as most of her professional work had been done under that name.  The union did not conceive any children (Berton, 2009).