Source confusion
Also known as: Source misattribution, Source amnesia
Remembering a fact but misremembering where it came from.
What it means
Source confusion is the failure to correctly recall the origin of a memory — whether something was seen or only imagined, read in a reliable place or a dubious one, said by one person or another — even when the content itself is retained. It arises because the contextual details that tag a memory's source are encoded and bound more weakly than the central content and are reconstructed at retrieval. The error is a principal route by which misinformation and imagined events get incorporated as genuine memories, and it underlies cryptomnesia and many eyewitness mistakes. Older adults and people under cognitive load are especially prone to it. It is the applied counterpart of the broader research program on source monitoring.
Examples
A witness confidently reports a detail that was actually suggested by a leading interview question, not seen at the scene.
You repeat a health claim at dinner, sure you read it in a serious newspaper; it actually came from a forwarded message you skimmed and dismissed at the time.
Someone recounts a vivid memory of getting lost at a funfair aged six, though what they retained is the family's retelling of the story, not the day itself.
First described in Studied within Johnson's source-monitoring framework (1993).
Where this comes up
- Yesterday, Re-written: The Science Behind MemoryEvery time you remember the past, you risk changing it.