Effects of scripted activities on false feelings of having previously visited a location.

False memories of one's past are often created by unconscious influences of previous experiences. This study examined whether action sequences, scripts that are frequent in everyday life, might induce false beliefs of having visited a location. Participants were shown photos of places they had not previously visited. Next, they rated how strongly they felt that they had visited the locations in the target scenes. Results indicated that when typical actions were presented in canonical order before the target scene, the feeling of having previously visited the location increased, relative to a condition with a random ordering of typical actions or to one with no presented actions. This study suggests that activation of script knowledge and misattribution of the source of feelings of familiarity elicit false beliefs of having visited a specific location, even if one understands that one has never previously visited the location.