They Were Certain. Their Own Handwriting Said Otherwise.

The morning after the Challenger exploded in January 1986, psychologist Ulric
Neisser handed a questionnaire to 106 students: where were you when you heard?

Two and a half years later he found the same students and asked again — without
showing them what they'd written.

The mean accuracy score was 2.95 out of 7. Around a quarter recalled a completely
different source than the one they'd recorded the day after. And their confidence,
averaging 4.17 out of 5, predicted almost nothing about whether they were right.

Then he showed them their own handwriting from 1986. Some looked at the page,
recognised the writing as theirs — and kept the newer memory anyway.

Neisser and Harsch called them "phantom flashbulbs": memories that feel
photographic and are simply wrong.

SOURCES
Neisser, U. & Harsch, N. (1992). "Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of
hearing the news about Challenger," in Affect and Accuracy in Recall, Cambridge
University Press.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Phantom-flashbulbs:-False-recollections-of-hearing-Neisser-Harsch/889678f5d6c9be0550253d964756eadbc8d482d7

The Conversation — "Flashbulb memories of dramatic events aren't as accurate as believed"
https://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-of-dramatic-events-arent-as-accurate-as-believed-64838

Memory & Cognition — "The formation of flashbulb memories"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03200860

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