01apr13e Aangeprate herinneringen
Uit Science, 3 november 2000
["possession" is hier te vertalen met "bezetenheid". Fr]
Researchers have found that people may become more easily convinced that they've witnessed a case of demonic possession if the event is made to seem plausible. [...] Now, in tests with Italian university students, psychologist Giuliana Mazzoni of Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, and colleagues have shown that they can convince even some skeptics that possession is possible. At the beginning of the study, to be published by the _Journal of Experimental Psychology_, all 22 subjects said that it was "highly implausible" that they had witnessed a demonic possession in their childhoods. Students then read short articles that claimed that the phenomenon is more common than thought and took a test that revealed their fears. The students were then told that their "fear profile" indicated that they probably had witnessed a possession. By the end of the process, four [out of 22] students agreed that it was likely that they had witnessed a possession, while the others remained unconvinced. [...] The authors argue that the manipulations in their experiment are "a mild version" of what can happen in psychotherapy, where "suggestive communications lead patients to believe that implausible events have happened to them." But psychologist Kathy Pezdek of Claremont Graduate University in California warns that the study doesn't necessarily mean it's easy for a therapist to induce false memories of childhood events such as sexual abuse, "especially when such events are implausible." - - -