"Convincing people of incidents that never actually happened" Reverse psychology is the method of getting someone to do what one wants, by pretending to not want it at all or to want something else. This is what books say, and it's done in many ways and most of the time we are caught when totally unprepared for it. October 2nd is known for majorly two reasons across India- first, as Mahatma Gandhi's birthday and second, when Vijay Salgaonkar from 'Drishyam' went to Panjim along with his family. The film has immortalised October 2nd. Thousands of memes on that famous episode flooded the social media… I am sure most of you have watched movie Drishyam, where Ajay Devgan plants memories in minds of several people with repeated and suggestive conversations. "Convincing them of incidents that never actually happened" He intends to gaslight the whole community into remembering or should we say-misremembering certain facts that will dilute any certainty about his actions, without drawing suspicion towards himself, and allow his family to get away with a crime they committed. So, one may wonder how and why we are able to remember something that didn't happen. 'Memories are complex events are moved from our brain's temporary memory to permanent storage while we are asleep'. This transition is not flawless and hence some elements of a memory may be lost, and false memories can begin. These can happen due to misinformation and misattribution of the source of information. Existing knowledge and other memories can also interfere with the formulation of a new memory causing the recollection of an event to be mistaken or be entirely false. In a classic study in the 1990s, Elizabeth Loftus led 25% of its participants to believe a fabricated event: that as a young child, each participant got lost in a shopping mall, and were frightened and alone for some time, before they were reunited with their parents. Loftus and her colleagues achieved this terrifying yet fascinating effect with the help of the participants' parents and multiple suggestive interviews. "At the time, it was a pretty dramatic discovery that memory was so malleable – that not only could the details of one's memory be changed, but completely false events could be implanted into the minds of research participants," Steven Frenda, an assistant professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and a former student of Loftus, told The Wire Science. If something is told and retold many times powerfully, we tend to believe it so much that it becomes part of our memory… I was listening to the quiz on radio while driving and 3 random events were described about certain politicians or known leaders whose news are generally published and contestants had to choose one which is not true, many answered and also claimed that other two news which they felt were true were seen in newspaper or on social media and in reality, none of them were true…how do you answer that? In wartime when soldiers are retained, they are brainwashed this way, how do you otherwise explain few American soldiers/POWs who were captured in Korean war, singing Chinese communist slogans (web series-Mind Explained-brainwash on Netflix) Do you want to believe all that your parents said about your childhood behaviour? Or are they using reverse psychology? Now that you know this fact, be mindful, and trust the data from right source only