Warner Bros. cartoon icon Bugs Bunny played a pivotal role in a study of false memory and the power of suggestive advertising.
That study -- conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle -- found that fully 30 percent of people shown a fake print advertisement of Bugs in front of Disneyland recalled shaking his hand when they visited the Anaheim, Calif., theme park -- even though the cartoon rabbit is a Warner Bros., not Disney, character.
"It's not that these people were unsure of whether they had met Bugs or not," UW graduate student Jacquie Pickrell told UPI. "They were asked whether they remembered or knew that they had met him at Disneyland -- and they were sure they had."
She added, "The frightening thing about this study is that it suggests how easily a false memory can be created."
The findings will be presented this week at the annual meeting the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition in Kingston, Ontario.
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