The almost unanimous false memory of the first World Trade Center impact

Although footage of the first plane's crash into World Trade Center did not become publicly available until later, the memory of having seen it on September 11, 2001, seem as pervasive as it is obviously false. In the scientific literature, this error has already been documented in several American subjects, including President Bush. The present work finds this error to be also highly prevalent and confidently held in two Danish student samples and explores patterns in the answers to identify possible causes. Mismatches related to the error are shown to exist in a televised summary of the events of September 11, 2001. The case is made that the error is caused by non-specific perception and recollection and that normal news processing affords the pervasiveness of this kind of error.