When someone is suspected of criminal activity, one of the most important questions they are asked is if they have a credible alibi. Playing back past events in our minds, however, is not like playing back a video recording. Recollections of locations, dates, and companions can become muddled with the passage of time. If a suspect’s memories are out of line with documented events, a once-plausible alibi can crumble and may be seen as evidence of guilt.
To put people’s memories of past whereabouts to the test, a team of researchers tracked the locations of 51 volunteers for one month and found that their recollections were wrong approximately 36% of the time.
“This is the first study to examine memory for where an event happened,” said Simon J. Dennis, director of the Complex Human Data Hub at the University of Melbourne’s School of Psychological Sciences and lead author of the study,…
