False memory has been an important field of research in psychology since the 1990s, when psychologists started turning up “recovered memories,” particularly of child sexual assault and ritual satanic abuse. The theory of recovered memory is that certain events may be so traumatic that they are blocked from one’s memory and can be recovered only with certain psychological techniques, including hypnosis.
When certain “recovered” memories were proved to be impossible, Elizabeth Loftus, now a professor at the University of California at Irvine, began to study the malleability of memory and whether certain techniques were more likely to produce false memories.30 She has since become the leading researcher in the field, receiving the American Psychological Foundation’s Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and is one of the most frequently cited psychologists in the world.31 Loftus and others demonstrated the ease with which false memories could be suggested to research subjects who felt them to be true, and the reliability of “recovered” memories came under serious question.
While the number of therapists treating recovered memories as credible dramatically diminished in the wake of the research into the malleability of memory, at least into the 2000s there was a divergence of opinion between clinical psychologists, who were more likely to give weight to recovered memories, and researchers, who were skeptical of such memories’ reliability. The majority of research psychologists now believe that memory is malleable—that is, it can be contaminated, distorted, or transformed by external suggestions and even by a person’s own internal thoughts about what might have happened. Clinicians, however, along with the public, are more likely to believe that repressed memories can be accurately retrieved in therapy.32 One researcher firmly in the pro–recovered memory camp is David Spiegel, who collaborated on at least three different papers with Ford. They introduced one joint experiment by emphasizing the usefulness of hypnosis in therapy, including to “assist in the retrieval of important memories.”33
Loftus, herself a Democrat who professed to be frightened of the prospect of Kavanaugh’s joining the Supreme Court, nonetheless found Ford’s testimony problematic, particularly her use of scientific terminology: “We got a laugh out of that.” She added that “no memory person would say ‘indelible in the hippocampus,’ ” because “things aren’t indelible, period, and they aren’t indelible in just one part of the brain.” One would have to know more about the nature of the marital therapy sessions, she said, to determine how much weight to give those memories, because some techniques are known to produce images and ideas in the mind of a patient that sometimes solidify into false memories. “In this case the question is, when did the accuser attach Brett Kavanaugh’s name to the incident?” she said. “Was it right away or did it come much later, say, in therapy?”
Not only memories, but confidence about one’s memories can be malleable. Some witnesses may have low confidence when they initially identify someone—for example, picking a suspect out of a lineup—but when their choice is reinforced by police officers or others, they appear highly confident months or years later at trial. This confidence makes them compelling witnesses, even though they may have been initially unsure of their memory. Studies have shown that one’s ability to tell whether a witness is making an accurate identification is fairly good if one is judging the witness’s confidence of his initial identification.34 But if the judgment of a witness’s reliability is based on the witness’s confidence at trial, after he has been subject to the influence of others, then that judgment is less likely to be accurate.35 Ford’s testimony, of course, was given decades after the event, and there had been abundant occasions for her memory to be influenced by any number of people—her therapist, husband, “beach friends,” and lawyers.
Empirical studies suggest that Ford’s testimony could have been inaccurate even if she was fully convinced that the events occurred as she described them. In other words, she could have been telling the truth and nevertheless have accused Kavanaugh falsely. Polygraph experts have also identified this problem, pointing out that polygraphs can assess only a person’s subjective belief.36 If the subject of a polygraph test believes what he is saying to be true, the polygraph will rate him non-deceptive. This was illustrated by Blasey Ford’s own testimony in the hearing, when she stated that details in the statement she read at the polygraph exam were in fact inaccurate. Because she apparently believed them to be true at the time, the test showed no deception.
The Kavanaugh team stuck to its policy of not attacking Ford personally even though damaging information about Ford was being openly discussed by people who knew her, some who knew her quite well. Classmates were surprised by the media’s portrayal of her as an ingénue, which was very different from how they remembered her in junior high and high school. Female classmates and friends at area schools recalled a heavy drinker who was much more aggressive with boys than they were. “If she only had one beer” on the night of the alleged assault, a high school friend said, “then it must have been early in the evening.” Her contemporaries all reported the same nickname for Ford, a riff on her maiden name and a sexual act. They also debated whether her behavior in high school could be attributed to the trauma of a sexual assault. If it could, one of them said, then the assault must have happened in seventh grade.
Although discussions along these lines were pervasive in the still-close Montgomery County community, none of these details was reported by the media, which were preoccupied with every emerging scrap of information about Kavanaugh’s youth.
Investigators on the Senate Judiciary Committee received communications from two men who claimed to have had (consensual) romantic encounters with the teenaged Christine Blasey. Each claimed consensual encounters with her that sounded similar to the assault she described. For instance, one man said that when he was a “19-year-old college student, he visited D.C. over spring break and kissed a girl he believes was Dr. Ford. He said that kiss happened in the bedroom of a house which was a 15- to 20-minute walk from the Van Ness Metro. Ford was wearing a swimsuit under her clothing, and the kissing ended when a friend jumped on them as a joke. [He] said that the woman initiated the kissing and that he did not force himself on her.”
Another person, claiming to be a college acquaintance of Ford’s, said that Ford used to purchase drugs from another student and regularly attended his fraternity parties. According to this witness, she enjoyed a robust social life in college. Other friends from college reported similar experiences and said Ford had never demonstrated fear of rooms with single entrances.
Contemporaries of Ford’s at Holton-Arms said the least believable part of her story was how she left the party. It was inconceivable to them that she would have left Leland Keyser behind and that Keyser would not have found her abandonment to be highly noteworthy. She had always filled a protective role for Ford, so it seemed quite unlikely that she would not have become worried and made sure her friend was well. The story of a fifteen-year-old tenth-grader leaving behind the only other female at a party and then finding her way home, miles away, in pre-cell-phone 1982, with no car, no metro, and no cabs readily available is difficult to believe.