lost in the shopping mall essay

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Essay on The Day I Got Lost in A Shopping Mall

February 2, 2018 by Study Mentor 2 Comments

Mall is a place where people go for shopping or to pass time or to just have fun. Malls are equipped with so many things that a person can spend the whole day there and can completely lose track of time. Each day a mall gets thousands and thousands of visitors.

Malls are generally big buildings with three to four floors along with an underground floor. There are many twists and turns in a mall’s floor and it is really easy to get lost there.

Malls generally consists of numerous number of shops at a floor and because of that, people often lose their way and end up roaming around the same place twice or thrice. It happens even with adults and there is nothing to be ashamed of in this situation as people don’t have control over these things.

Even the workers of the mall know this fact and so they usually provide a directory of the shops in each floor. However, every mall is not equipped with this facility especially the mall in which I got lost once.

I was never a city girl as I grew up in village areas so a city was a wondrous place for me. For higher education my father brought me to the city. After staying in the city for a few weeks, my father took me to a shopping mall for the first time in my life.

I had no idea about what a mall or shopping mall is, so generally I was curious about it. I was confused when father took me inside a large and tall building.

At that time, I was thinking that what is my father doing and why is he taking me to a building which is probably an office but did not say anything out loud as I figured that he definitely knows where is he going.

When I first entered and the security came to check me, I was surprised. I had no idea what they were doing but saw everyone going through the process, so I did too.

After going inside, my jaw dropped. The first thing that came to my mind was flashy as everywhere I looked, there were lights and everything looked flashy.

I was looking everywhere with wonder and thinking that I am probably in a royal palace or something like that. I was trailing behind my father and didn’t realize when I lost sight of my father.

When I came back to my senses, I realized that I am standing in the middle of the lobby and cannot find my father anywhere. I generally panicked. I mean that’s what a person who is new in the city does. Wherever I looked, all I could see was people, tons of people.

I was standing in between the sea of people and had no idea about what I should do. I was generally scared and panicking wasn’t helping my situation at all. I tried to clear my head and think of possible ways by which I can find my father.

At that time people didn’t use to have mobile phones with them, so I couldn’t just go to a person and ask them to make a call to father.

But that’s what I did. I went forward and ask a person to call my father and as my luck went that day, that person didn’t have a mobile phone with him, so he couldn’t help me out.

I never thought that I will be lost in an unknown place and especially a place that is so crowded that it is almost impossible to find someone once you lost sight of them.

I was sure about one thing that my father is already looking for me and that thought gave me a little comfort. Shopping malls generally consists of multiple number of floors and in my case I was lost on the first floor only after ten minutes of entering the big building with multiple shops and numerous number of lights everywhere.

The crowed push me towards the entrance of a shop where “Shopper Stop” was written in big bold words. I stood beside the entrance and started looking around for my father but couldn’t find him anywhere. Some time passed and still there was no sign of my father anywhere, so I started crying.

The security guard of the shop saw me crying for some time and came towards me and asked what is wrong and why you are crying. When I explained my situation to him, he immediately called for another security guard on his walkie-talkie and explained the situation.

After five minutes another guard came and took me to the mall’s office. There the people calmed me down and took my father’s phone number from me and called him up.

After informing my father of my whereabouts, they sat with me and gave me a chocolate so that I won’t cry anymore. Within ten minutes my father came to the office with a security guard.

There I found out that when my father realized I was missing, he tried to find me but failed. So, he after contemplating about what he should do, he went to talk to a security guard about the situation. While he was talking with him, the phone call from the mall’s security office went to him.

The security guard came along with my father. After looking at my father for the first time after being lost, I was relieved. In fact, I was so relieved that I started to cry again and at that time my father along with other security guards comfort me.

The experience was really scary for me but it also gave me a lesson that no matter what the situation is, a person should not panic as it does not solve the situation at all but it definitely makes it worse.

My father later jokingly told me that if I ever get lost in a shopping mall again, my father will go straight to the security office and after going there he will see that I am sitting there with a chocolate clutch in my hand along with the head security in charge of that place.

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Lost in the mall and other false memories.

How accurate are your memories? Many experiments, from the séance room to the psychology lab, have shown just how vulnerable our memories can be, both to the passage of time and, more worryingly, to manipulation from others.

Words by A R Hopwood average reading time 7 minutes 27 June 2019

O ne of my earliest memories is being with my mum in a large shopping centre in my home town at about the age of five. As we were about to get on to the escalator to go back down to the ground floor, I lost my grip on her hand. As my poor, horrified mother made her way down the moving staircase I stood there frozen at the top, bawling my eyes out.

She shouted up to tell me to stay where I was and that she’d be back up straight away, but I was lucky that the shop security guard heard the commotion and then helped me down the escalator to my dear mum. The whole experience took only a few seconds, but it’s a mildly upsetting memory that has stayed with me for ever.

Now I come to think of it, it may have actually happened in our local bank and not a shopping mall. Hang on a minute – I’m not entirely sure if it was the security guard that helped me back to see her. Perhaps it was an old lady carrying one of those old-fashioned shopping trolleys. Or an old man? Or did my mum run the wrong way back up the escalator and gather me back up in her arms? Was I actually with my mum? Or was it my dad? The only thing I know for sure was that something vaguely similar happened. Didn’t it?

Magic, memories and malobservations

In 1887, psychical researcher Richard Hodgson and expert conjurer S J Davey weren’t looking to prove or disprove the existence of spirit communication, like many of their contemporaries. They were exploring something far more profound: the fallible nature of human memory and observation. To do this, they used trickery to deceive their unwitting experimental participants.

It had been noted by one of the founders and most experienced members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) , Eleanor Sidgwick, that recollections from séances could be “defective or misdirected”, so Hodgson and Davey set out to test if this was really the case.

A "spirit photograph" which Dr Hodgson had taken in order to show that a face may be made to appear over jewellery.

For the experiment, they invited members of the public to a series of private séances, where they witnessed messages and symbols mysteriously appearing on chalk slates. Unbeknownst to them, Davey was using his conjuring skills to produce the phenomena. At the end of each performance the participants were asked to provide written accounts of everything they’d just seen. 

What was clear from the accounts collected from 17 different sittings over several months was that attendees often had wildly different recollections of the experience and that key events had been misremembered. Perhaps most tellingly, participants also didn’t notice (or didn’t see) Davey moving his slate underneath the table where it was swapped for another and placed back on the surface – the move was somehow hidden in plain sight, in an early documented example of inattentional blindness .

Our observations and memories may not be as reliable as we think they are, particularly in emotional settings where the unexpected happens.

Hodgson and Davey’s deceptive experiments had illustrated that Sidgwick’s hunch was right – that our observations and memories may not be as reliable as we think they are, particularly in emotional settings where the unexpected happens. 

This extraordinary set of experiments was for a while considered something of a footnote in the history of the SPR. But they have recently been claimed by a number of experimental psychologists as a precursor to some of the most insightful memory research that has emerged over the last 30 years.

Remembering a fiction

Professor Elizabeth Loftus perhaps inadvertently owes a lot to Hodgson and Davey. Over a series of carefully crafted memory experiments between 1974 and 1979 she successfully illustrated that ‘false’ memories of events can easily develop if witnesses of an incident are asked leading questions, or if false information is provided to a witness by an authority figure after the event has taken place.

Her discovery of this ‘misinformation effect’ continues to have a major impact on the legal profession; however, such landmark developments were only made possible by Loftus using deception in her original experiments.

As with Hodgson and Davey, participants could not be informed that they were about to be fed false information, because this would have negated the effect. The initial deception was required to help her understand how false information can affect memory, so that law-enforcement agencies were less likely to pursue wrongful convictions. 

But she also wanted to ask if such false memories could emerge without an original ‘lived experience’ to use as the basis of the distortion. Was it possible that an entirely invented experience that was demonstrably not true could in some way be ‘implanted’ into the mind of an unwitting participant?

In 1994 she reported a series of experiments that clearly illustrated that it was in fact very easy for someone to develop a memory of an entirely fictional event when suggestion and misinformation were used by an authority figure over a series of interviews. In her now famous ‘Lost in the Mall’ study, each subject was given summaries of four incidents from their childhood. Three stories were true; one was false. In the false story the participant was told that they had been lost in a mall or department store and that they were eventually found and returned to their parents.

Photograph from Elizabeth Loftus's original Stop Yield 1978 experiment, one of the first to use misinformation about a witnessed car accident.

After being coercively interviewed in the weeks that followed, 25 per cent of the participants reported clear memories of the fictional incident. Loftus had effectively created a false memory of being lost in a shopping mall in the minds of a significant minority of the participants. 

Since then Loftus and scores of psychologists from around the world have refined and replicated the effect in hundreds of experiments, with the rate of false memory creation usually somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent. The ethical legitimacy for such a methodology is a battle that has been hard fought – why should memory scientists be allowed to play with peoples’ minds in this way?

Unlike some examples of deceptive practice, there are clear and robust ethical clearances involved in the creation of a false memory experiment. Although participants are initially unaware of the deception, the researchers have to thoroughly debrief them after the experiment about the true purpose of the study and give them a choice to opt out of the results.

There are also limits to the kind of memories that are allowed to be ‘created’ and, perhaps most importantly, the ends have to justify the means. There have to be real-world settings where such insights into the nature of authority, suggestion and misinformation could be useful.

Fakery and false memories

In settings where either a therapist or a law-enforcement officer is trying to access ‘forgotten’ or so-called ‘repressed’ memories from a patient or witness, the science of false memory has indeed shown that there are considerable dangers in using suggestive techniques and misinformation (even unwittingly).

Such implications have been well documented . However, there are also now wider lessons to be learned about our current misinformation age from this fascinating paradigm. It’s one thing to understand that our autobiographical memories can be seriously manipulated by malign forms of suggestion, but what happens when our pre-existing biases and beliefs encounter similar manipulations?  

False information designed for political or personal gain has, it can be argued, always been a problem, but now, with the channels of miscommunication so slick, a malign deception can take on a hue of truth faster than ever before. And we now have at our disposal the technology to provide compelling photographic and video ‘evidence’ for such false events.  

Next time I’ll explore the impact this advanced fakery has, and how we can learn to see through the veneer.

About the author

A r hopwood.

• arhopwood.com
• @arhopwood on Instagram

A R Hopwood is an artist and Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow. He has collaborated extensively with psychologists to create art projects about memory, belief and misdirection, including WITH ( withyou.co.uk ) and the False Memory Archive. He was co-curator of ‘Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic’ at Wellcome Collection in 2019.

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What is the Lost in the Mall Technique and how is it used in psychological research?

The Lost in the Mall Technique is a well-known and widely used research method in the field of psychology. It involves creating a false memory in an individual by providing them with a fabricated story of being lost in a mall during their childhood. This technique has been used by researchers to study the phenomenon of false memories and how easily they can be created in the human mind. In this essay, we will explore the concept of the Lost in the Mall Technique and its applications in psychological research. We will also discuss its significance in understanding memory processes and its potential implications in various aspects of human behavior.

The “Lost in the Mall” technique is an experimental procedure that was used to demonstrate that confabulations can be created through suggestions made to experimental subjects. It was first developed by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus in an effort to explain how normal people can claim to have recovered memories of improbable experiences.

Study methodology

Loftus and her student Jacqueline Pickrell performed an experiment in which they gave participants four short narratives describing childhood events, all supposedly provided by family members, and asked them to try to recall them. Unbeknownst to the participants, one of the narratives, describing a time when the subject was lost in a mall when they were a child, was false. The narrative described an instance when the subject was five or six years old lost in a shopping mall for an extended period of time before finally being rescued by an elderly person and reunited with his or her family. The narrative was based upon actual family shopping trips and incorporated plausible details provided by the relative. In the study, 25% of the participants reported to be able to remember this event even though it never actually occurred. Many people were able to provide embellishing details that were not supplied by the investigators. Loftus interpreted this to mean that the act of imagining the events led to the creation of false memories. The lost in the mall experiment has been replicated and extended with different ages of subjects.

Criticisms of methodology and conclusions

Some conclusions drawn based on the lost in the mall technique (specifically that leading questions can create false memories of child sexual abuse) have been criticized. In an extension of the experiment, Pezdek, using the subjects’ family members to do the interviewing, was able to replicate Loftus’ findings that memories of being lost in the mall could be created and were more likely to occur in young children, but a much smaller number of children reported false memories of a painful and embarrassing enema. Kenneth Pope questioned the comparability of the technique’s ability to generate a false memory with the ability of a therapist to create a pseudomemory of child rape, as well as possible confounding variables within the study. Lynn Crook and Martha Dean question the application of the study to the creation of false memories during therapy and criticize the study for methodological errors.

Loftus has responded to Crook and Dean’s criticisms, pointing to the exaggerations, omissions and errors in the description of the technique, the general lack of scientific competence of their reply and mis-statements about the actual findings of her study, describing Crook and Dean’s article as a “partisan essay.” Loftus also states that Crook’s article follows a long series of efforts to discredit her work publicly and personally.

Essay on A Visit to a Mall

Students are often asked to write an essay on A Visit to a Mall in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on A Visit to a Mall

Introduction.

A mall is a bustling hub of activity. It’s a place where people shop, dine, and enjoy entertainment. I recently had the opportunity to visit a local mall, which was an exciting experience.

Upon entering the mall, I was greeted by a variety of stores. From clothing to electronics, there was something for everyone. I spent time exploring different shops, admiring the array of products available.

Food and Entertainment

The food court was filled with delicious aromas. I enjoyed a tasty meal there. The mall also housed a cinema, providing a perfect end to my visit.

A visit to a mall is a fun-filled experience, offering shopping, dining, and entertainment under one roof.

250 Words Essay on A Visit to a Mall

The allure of the modern mall.

The modern mall, a symbol of consumerism, serves as a microcosm of society where diverse individuals converge for various purposes. A visit to the mall is not just about shopping; it’s an experience that transcends the boundaries of age, class, and culture.

The Mall as a Social Space

Malls have evolved into social spaces that cater to a plethora of needs. They host events, provide entertainment facilities, and serve as a meeting point for friends and families. The food court, a melting pot of cuisines, reflects the multicultural dimension of society. Cinemas, gaming zones, and bookstores offer recreational opportunities, while the constant hum of conversation creates a unique ambiance.

Consumerism and the Mall Culture

The mall culture has significantly shaped consumer behavior. The strategically placed products, attractive discounts, and the sheer variety of goods available make the mall a shopper’s paradise. Malls, with their aesthetic appeal and convenience, encourage consumerism, subtly influencing people’s spending habits.

The Impact of Malls on the Environment

However, the environmental impact of malls cannot be overlooked. The excessive use of energy for lighting, heating, and air conditioning contributes to the carbon footprint. Additionally, the culture of consumerism propagated by malls leads to increased production, resulting in more waste.

A visit to the mall is a multifaceted experience. While it offers convenience and entertainment, it also unveils the aspects of consumerism and environmental impact. As conscious consumers, we should strive for sustainable shopping practices, making the mall visit not just an indulgence, but a mindful activity.

500 Words Essay on A Visit to a Mall

A mall is a bustling microcosm of modern society, offering a blend of commerce, entertainment, and social interaction. The experience of visiting a mall is both sensory and cognitive, engaging one’s senses while also provoking thoughts on consumer culture, social dynamics, and urban development.

The Allure of the Mall

The allure of the mall lies in its multifaceted nature. It is a place where one can shop, dine, watch movies, and engage in a variety of recreational activities. The mall’s architecture, designed to stimulate consumer interest, is a testament to the power of visual aesthetics. The use of space, light, and color creates an environment that is both inviting and captivating.

Consumer Culture and Social Dynamics

Visiting a mall provides a glimpse into the consumer culture that dominates modern society. The array of stores, each with its unique branding and marketing strategies, reflects the diversity of consumer preferences and the competitive nature of the market. The mall serves as a platform where businesses vie for consumer attention, employing tactics that range from eye-catching window displays to enticing sales promotions.

The social dynamics within a mall are equally intriguing. People from different walks of life converge at the mall, each with their own purpose. Some are there to shop, some to socialize, and some to simply enjoy the ambience. The mall serves as a social hub, a place where people can interact, observe, and engage with others.

Reflections on Urban Development

The presence and popularity of malls have significant implications for urban development. They are often seen as symbols of economic growth and prosperity, attracting investment and boosting local economies. However, the rise of malls also raises questions about sustainability and social equity. The proliferation of malls can lead to the decline of local businesses and exacerbate socio-economic disparities.

A visit to a mall is more than just a shopping trip. It is an opportunity to observe and reflect on the complexities of modern society. The mall is a mirror that reflects our consumer habits, our social interactions, and our urban development strategies. As we walk through its corridors, we are not just passive consumers but active participants in a dynamic social and economic system.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Analysis of Research “Lost in the Mall”

The “lost in a shopping mall” study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients. The mall study originated in 1991 as 5 pilot experiments involving 3 children and 2 adult participants. The University of Washington Human Subjects Committee granted approval for the mall study on August 10, 1992.

The preliminary results with the 5 pilot subjects were announced 4 days later. An analysis of the mall study shows that beyond the external misrepresentations, internal scientific methodological errors cast doubt on the validity of the claims that have been attributed to the mall study within scholarly and legal arenas. The minimal involvement? or, in some cases, negative impact? of collegial consultation, academic supervision, and peer review throughout the evolution of the mall study are reviewed. Key words: research ethics, false memories, mall study, autobiographical memory Note: Footnotes are listed at the end of the main text, before the references. ] The “lost in a shopping mall” study (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995) originated as five single-participant “pilot” experiments conducted at the direction of University of Washington researcher Elizabeth Loftus. Loftus (L oftus & Ketcham, 1994) described the study in terms that suggest that proper research guidelines were not followed in these pilot experiments. The results of the mall study continue to be misrepresented in the media in sworn testimony and in scholarly ublications. The roles of mechanisms currently in place to ensure the integrity of such research are reviewed here.

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Evolution of the “Lost in a shopping mall” study

Loftus (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994) provided a revealing account of the evolution of the mall study. In August 1991, Loftus attended a talk (Ganaway, 1991) that blamed recovered memories of sexual abuse on media exposure and psychotherapists? expectations (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 89). After this talk, Loftus wondered if she “could provide a theoretical framework… howing that it is possible to create an entire memory for a traumatic event that never happened” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 90). As Loftus explained: “I wanted to ? scar? the brain with something that never happened, creating a vivid but wholly imagined impression. I just couldn? t quite figure out how to do it” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 92).

Loftus described her dilemma to a group of University of Washington graduate students and psychology majors: The trick was to design a study powerful enough to prove that it is possible to implant a false memory while also winning the approval of the university? Human Subjects Committee, which reviews proposed research projects to ensure that they will not be harmful to participants. (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 91) In October of the same year, Loftus discussed the memory-implantation hypothesis with a colleague from the University of Georgia during a drive to the Atlanta airport. During this discussion, Loftus decided to base her study on getting lost in a shopping mall. Still, Loftus wondered if “we could get the idea through the Human Subjects Committee. Maybe” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 94).

Pilot Subject

Shortly after the University of Georgia trip, Loftus attended a party where she participated in the creation of the first false mall memory (Pilot Subject 1). Although not a pilot study in the strictest sense, the results of this interaction were included in what has been referred to as a “pilot study” (Goleman, 1992) and as “pilot subjects” (Loftus, 1992). At this party, Loftus asked a friend: “Do you think it might be possible to convince [his daughter] that she was lost in a shopping mall when she was five years old? ” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 95). Loftus? riend initiated this experiment by introducing his 8-year-old daughter, Jenny, to Loftus. After hearing a third set of corroborating details from her father, Jenny replied that she remembered “looking all over for you, and I couldn? t find you” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 95). Loftus asked: “Were you scared, Jenny? ” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 95). Jenny shook her head. Loftus? friend told his daughter that he had been scared, and his daughter replied: “Not as scared as I was” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 95). Loftus concluded: I couldn? t believe what I had just witnessed.

In five minutes, with a few suggestions and minor prods from her father [and Loftus], Jenny had accepted a false memory and embellished it with details of her own. She remembered being lost, she remembered looking all over for her father, and she remembered being scared. In less time than it took to cook a hard-boiled egg, we [italics added] had created a false memory. (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, pp. 95? 96)

Pilot Subjects 2 to 5 The second and third pilot subjects were the result of an extra credit assignment that Loftus offered to her undergraduate cognitive psychology class in late 1991: I? e been thinking a lot lately about whether it is possible to inject into someone’s mind a whole memory for a fictitious event. For example, would it be possible to make someone believe that they were lost in a shopping mall as a child when, in fact, they had never been lost in a shopping mall? (Loftus ;amp; Ketcham, 1994, p. 96) Three weeks later, 2 of Loftus? approximately 120 undergraduate cognitive psychology students turned in assignments (Pilot Subjects 2 and 3) with results indicating that they had successfully convinced their 8- and 14-year-old family members of a false “lost” memory.

Two further single-participant experiments (Pilot Subjects 4 and 5) were conducted by unspecified persons to determine if adults could be convinced of a similar false memory.

Jim Coan, the brother of Chris (Pilot Subject 3), was assigned as chief co-investigator for the mall study. In this role, Coan prepared the HSC application. Loftus described the HSC’s reaction to the mall study proposal: The Human Subjects Committee tore our proposed study apart. What if your subjects are under emotional stress and became upset at the deception inherent in the experimental situation? ” How do you plan to screen out vulnerable subjects? What will you do if someone becomes seriously distressed when informed of the deception? What if a subject finds the false memory disturbingly similar to an event that actually happened? Will your subjects experience a sense of betrayal at being manipulated? ” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 100) These issues were resolved and permission to implement the mall study was granted by the HSC on August 10, 1992 (HSC Application No. 22? 175? C, 1992). Four days later, Loftus made a startling announcement at the American Psychological Association’s (APA) annual convention: Well, we? re just beginning a program of research where we essentially try to simulate what goes on in this Piaget anecdote. Could you inject an entire memory into the mind of someone for something that never existed? A childhood memory, even something that was mildly traumatic? I? m sorry I don? t have more data to tell you about here to day, but it took several months for the Human Subjects Committee to officially approve this idea. . . . I? ll talk about just a couple of pilot subjects now.

Our preliminary study involves injecting memories of getting lost in a shopping mall. (Loftus, 1992) Loftus (1992) proceeded to describe the experience of Chris, the 14-year-old pilot subject in whom a false lost memory was “implanted” in 1991 without HSC approval. It appears that Loftus was presenting these data as if they were developed during a properly controlled pilot research study rather than during a classroom exercise. In addition, Loftus implied during this presentation to the APA that she had refrained from experimenting with human participants until after the HSC approved the proposal.

THE MALL STUDY Participants were recruited by University of Washington students who provided both a participant and a relative of the participant (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 721). Twenty-four participants (3 men, 21 women) ranging in age from 18 to 53 completed the study (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 721). Each participant was provided with a booklet containing brief accounts of three true childhood incidents which were provided by the relative. Relatives also provided “information about a plausible [italics added] shopping trip to a mall or large department store” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 2 1) so that a fourth false incident that supposedly occurred when the participant and close family member were together could be included in the booklet in the third position (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 721). Participants were told that they were participating in a study on childhood memories, and that [the researchers] were interested in how and why people remembered some things and not others. They were asked to complete the booklets by reading what their relative had told [the researchers] about each event, and then writing what they remembered about each event.

If they did not remember the event, they were told to write “I do not remember this. ” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 722) Results When the study booklets were completed by the participants, “7 (29. 2%) of the 24 subjects ? remembered? the false event, either fully or partially” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 722). During the first interviews conducted 1 to 2 weeks after completion of the booklets, the participants were told that the researchers were “interested in examining how much detail they could remember, and how their memories compared with those of their relative” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 22). At the beginning of the first interview, participants were again asked to recall as much as they could about each of the four events; then they were asked to rate their clarity and confidence for each memory (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 722). At some unspecified point during the first interview, 1 of the 7 participants who had previously “remembered” the false event revealed that she had changed her mind, leaving 6 (25. 0%) participants who still believed at the conclusion of the first interview that the false memory was true (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 22). According to Loftus: “This same percentage held for the second interview” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 722). The second interviews were conducted 1 to 2 weeks later. Participants were again asked for further detail and to rate their clarity and confidence levels. At the end of the second interviews the participants were told that the study had attempted “to create a memory for something that had not happened” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 722).

The participants were asked to select the false memory: “Of the 24 total, 19 subjects correctly chose the getting-lost memory as the false one, while the remaining five [20. 8%] incorrectly thought that one of the true events was the false one” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 723). Discussion The authors stated that they “make no claims about the percentage of people who might be able to be misled in this way” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 723) and that they are “providing an ? existence proof? for the phenomenon of false memory formation” (Loftus ;amp; Pickrell, 1995, p. 724).

Although the mall study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients, the therapeutic implications of the study appear to be limited to a narrowly defined and perhaps even unlikely situation. The mall study results suggest that if a psychotherapist were to devise a plausible false memory of childhood trauma and tell a client, “I was given this information by your relative who was present at the time,” then the client may accept this false account as fully or partially true.

Notably, a similar study (Pezdek, 1995) found that although 3 (15%) of 20 participants recalled a plausible false memory of getting lost in a shopping mall, none of the participants accepted an implausible false memory that they had received a painful enema as a child from their parent. ETHICAL ISSUES RELATING TO REQUIREMENTS FOR PRIOR REVIEW OF HUMAN PARTICIPANTS IN RESEARCH Precedent and practice at the University of Washington have established that certain types of research with human participants do not require review by the HSC. The University of Washington defines those categories that do not require review: a) accepted and established service relationships between professionals and clients where the activity is designed solely to meet the needs of the client; (b) research using only publicly accessible materials; (c) research using only historical documents; (d) research using only archaeological materials or other historical or prehistorical artifacts; (e) research based on data tapes or other records which lack all personal identifiers; (f) research based on surveys or interviews with elected or appointed public officials or candidates for public office; and (g) research based on pathological or diagnostic specimens which lack all personal identifiers. (Secretary of the University of Washington Faculty, 1970, vol. IV, chap. 1, section 2) Under these provisions, an attempt to implant a false memory in a human participant as described in Loftus? published and publicly presented work would require HSC approval. Loftus subsequently explained why she did not obtain HSC approval prior to assigning students to implant a false memory. “Well I didn? t think I needed [HSC approval]. Because as far as I knew class observations wasn? [sic] research; it was a class demonstration” (Vickie Turner and Michael Turner v. Linda Honker, MEd; Art C. Aarauzo, MD; Charter Behavioral Health System of Dallas, Inc. ; Maryanne Watson, PhD; and Lee Smith, PhD, 1996). However, this sworn testimony that these activities were a class demonstration rather than research appears to contradict Loftus? (1992) statement that these activities constituted a “preliminary study. ” Were Students Informed of Ethical Guidelines Specific to Their Assignment? There is no evidence to indicate that Loftus? students were informed that deceiving study participants might be problematic. As Coan (1997) reported: “I hadn? realized that deceiving participants as a part of psychological research was anything other than business as usual …

I hadn? t considered most of their concerns at all, let alone how to address them” (p. 275). There is no evidence to indicate that Loftus? students were informed of ethical guidelines regarding the use of children as research participants. For example, the University of Washington’s HSC requires that prior assent must be obtained from all child participants, and a Committee-approved form is provided for this purpose (University of Washington HSC staff, personal communication, June 2, 1997). Because the experiments on Brittany and Chris were conducted by Loftus? tudents without a Committee-approved form, they appear to have been conducted in violation of University of Washington HSC requirements. According to Loftus? account, the pilot subjects reacted “with good-natured amazement to the news that experimenters had successfully tampered with their memories” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 100). Although trusted family members do tell socially sanctioned “white lies” to children regarding Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, an experiment that involves “tampering” with a child’s memory by a trusted family member may open the possibility for potential risk to the child. Should Student-Generated Data Be Disseminated as Research? It is yet to be determined if unapproved student-generated data can be isseminated outside the classroom as preliminary research with the inference that HSC approval has been granted. MISREPRESENTATIONS OF MALL STUDY RESULTS The results of the mall study have been pervasively misrepresented in the media, in scholarly journals, and in courtroom testimony to suggest that therapists can implant false memories of sexual abuse in their clients. Although researchers are not responsible for media inaccuracies regarding their research, they are ethically required to attempt to correct inaccuracies to the extent that this is possible. We are not aware of any efforts by Loftus to correct these inaccuracies, and we welcome any published evidence to the contrary.

The first media report of the mall study (Goleman, 1992) appeared in the New York Times on July 21, 1992, 3 weeks prior to HSC approval. In this initial report, readers were erroneously led to believe that Coan participated in all of the experiments and that the five participants experienced the same protocol: With Jim Coan, a graduate [sic] student, Dr. Loftus had a close relative of her experimental subjects describe three events from the subject’s childhood, and offer specifics for the setting of a fictitious fourth event, the time the person supposedly got lost. “We told the subjects we were studying childhood memories, and asked them to write everything they could remember about each of these incidents,” said Dr. Loftus.

In the pilot study, the subjects, two [sic] children and three [sic] adults, proceeded to supply details of the fictitious incident, apparently not realizing it was not true. (p. C1) Four days after HSC approval was granted, the Associated Press (1992) inaccurately reported that the five case studies were the “first five subjects” in a study, implying that a study had been properly initiated: To prove that memories can be planted, Loftus and colleague Jim Coan have launched a study in which they try to convince subjects they were lost in a shopping mall at age 5. They often start by having a parent or other trusted authority figure suggest to the study subject that such an event occurred. Not only have the first five subjects developed a memory of the false incident,” Loftus said, “but they also often elaborate the story with their own details. ” (p. A5) As previously noted, 20. 8% of the participants remained fully or partially convinced of the false memory by the end of the second interview. The following statements indicate that by 1995 the results of the mall study were inflated to 25% (or more) in interviews with Loftus, in sworn testimony, and in scholarly publications. Loftus: In one experiment, it was shown that the memory of being lost in a mall at the age of five and being rescued by an elderly person can be implanted by pressured suggestion. More than 25% [italics added] of the subjects “remembered” this happening. (Klein, 1995, p. 93) I [Loftus] would say in roughly a quarter that we succeeded in getting them to remember all or part of the experience of getting lost that we suggested to them. (Turner v. Honker, 1996, p. 160) Of the 24 subjects in whom we suggest three true events and one false one, 75% said they couldn? t remember the false events. The remaining subjects developed a complete false memory or a partial one. (Loftus, Feldman, & Dashiell, 1995) Seven of 24 subjects “remembered” the false event? either fully or partially? in the initial booklet, but in the follow-up interviews only 6 subjects (25%) remembered the event. (Loftus, Coan, & Pickrell, 1996)

More recent accounts suggest that it was “easy” to implant a false memory. These reports overlook the 19 participants who did not accept the false memory, as well as the fact that not all 5 participants fully accepted the false memory: “In one famous study, ? Lost in a Shopping Mall,? [Loftus] proved that false memories of childhood could be implanted in 25 percent of research subjects merely by suggestion” (Morrison, 1996, p. 52). Haney (1997) quoted Loftus? February 2, 1997, presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science: “With just a little gentle coaxing,” Loftus said, “about one-quarter of study subjects agree this happened to them. “

These statements illustrate the tendency of secondary sources (journalists, scholars, and indeed Loftus herself) to overestimate both the ease with which participants in the original mall study were made to believe a false autobiographical event and the extent to which the experimental manipulation was successful. The Role of Scientific Standards in Ensuring Scholarly Integrity The scientific community has established such mechanisms as peer consultation,2 faculty supervision, and peer review to ensure that human participants are not harmed. In the next section, we examine how faculty supervision and peer review functioned throughout the mall study. Faculty Supervision The University of Washington provided this description of its research environment:

The University creates an environment in which research flourishes, and depends on individuals to exercise their integrity in carrying out their scientific and scholarly activities. Senior faculty, principal investigators, and others in positions of responsibility for the conduct of research are expected to exercise reasonable supervision of those under their direction to ensure the integrity of the research being conducted. (Secretary of the University of Washington Faculty, 1970, vol. IV, chap. l, section 1) Therefore, as a senior faculty member at the University of Washington, Loftus was responsible for supervising students to whom she had provided an assignment that would require them to experiment on human participants.

However, Loftus apparently gave her students an assignment for which she appeared to be aware would require HSC approval (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, pp. 91, 94). Furthermore, there is no indication that Loftus informed her students of this requirement. Peer Review The “lost in a shopping mall” study was published in Psychiatric Annals (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995), a peer-reviewed journal. However, noting the following criticisms, this review might best be described as cursory. First, a factual ambiguity appears on page 722 (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995): Six participants claimed to remember the false incident during the first interview, and “this same percentage held for the second interview. As previously noted, this same percentage (25%) did not hold for the second interview because only 5 participants claimed to remember the false incident by the end of the second interview (p. 723). Second, Loftus and Pickrell (1995) claimed that they are providing an “existence proof? for the phenomenon of false memory formation” (p. 724). This use of the term existence proof is misleading. Behavioral research provides “evidence,” not the more absolute mathematical “proof” of any construct. An existence proof is the process by which a scientist attempts to prove the existence of an unobservable entity or phenomenon by describing this entity in a manner that allows for or ex plains what is observable. Although memories are not observable, the written responses (booklets) and oral behavior (interviews) were observable.

These self-reports are open to multiple interpretations regarding their causes, including (but not limited to) the assumption that they are more or less correlated with the participants? perceptions of their memories as real. Therefore, we suggest that the authors would have more accurately represented their results if they had simply claimed to provide an example of behavior consistent with false memory formation, rather than existence proof for such a phenomenon. Third, the Method section is incomplete. This section does not include the criteria used to differentiate between participants who fully accepted the false memory and those who partially accepted the false memory.

The section does not indicate whether those participants who wrote “I do not remember this” and then continued on to speculate as to “how and when it might have happened” (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995), were then classified as partially remembering the false event. 3 Finally, the study results are incomplete. There are no data on relative success rates? that is, how many participants were “fully” convinced and how many were only “partially” convinced of the false memory. CONCLUSION At several points in the conduct and reporting of this mall study research, some members of the scientific community have apparently overlooked opportunities to ensure that the research would be properly conducted and accurately reported. Remarkably, few within the scientific community have commented on the lapses in proper research practices that Loftus displayed in The Myth of Repressed Memory (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994).

We suggest that fewer still have compared the primary research results of the original mall study to the many inaccuracies reported in subsequent or secondary sources. Many within the scientific community may be continuing to overlook similar opportunities. Secondary reports about a subsequent study (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996) provide a case in point, demonstrating both selectivity and inaccuracy. This research was conducted to determine whether imagining a childhood event would increase participants? confidence that this event occurred. The results of this study show that of the eight imagined events, imagining cutting one? hand on a broken window showed the greatest increase in confidence (24% [imagined] vs. 12% [not imagined]).

Overall, confidence levels increased 8. 2% and “all but [italics added] the ? Lifeguard? item” (p. 216) showed an increase in confidence. The following articles selectively reported only the results of the cut hand event. Neither article reported the overall results of the original research, and Loftus (1996) incorrectly stated that all items showed an increase in confidence: In the case of the cut hand, about 25 percent of the volunteers who had been asked to imagine the accident now were more likely to believe that it actually happened to them.

About 12 percent of those in a control group that had not been asked to imagine the accident also changed their minds and on the second time seeing the list said they had some recollection of breaking a window with their hand in childhood. (Russell, 1997) After engaging in this act of imagination [cut hand], 24% of subjects increased their subjective confidence that something like this actually happened to them. For those who had not imagined the event, only 12% showed a corresponding increase. The other seven critical items [italics added] used in this study similarly showed increased subjective confidence after imagination. (Loftus, 1996) We have attempted to present what might very well be the first rigorous examination of the “lost in a shopping mall” study and its citations in subsequent sources.

We suggest that similar studies on such controversial topics as implanting false memories deserve rigorous scrutiny as well. It remains to be seen whether the scientific community can ensure that such research will be properly conducted and accurately quoted in the future.

Mall study chief co-investigator Jim Coan (1997) stated: “The same month we received Human Subjects [sic] approval, July 1992, the “Chris Study” appeared in the New York Times, in an article by Daniel Goleman titled ? Childhood Trauma: Memory or Invention? ” (p. 276). That statement is inaccurate; HSC approval was granted on August 10, 1992 (HSC Application No. 22-175-C, 1992). 2. As previously noted, Loftus? eer consultation was limited to a group of University of Washington graduate students and psychology majors, as well as one colleague at the University of Georgia. 3. There are other important deficiencies in the published description of the Method, such as whether or not a double blind technique was used to minimize interviewer or experimenter bias as an extraneous variable. However, those methodological deficiencies are beyond the scope of this article.

• Coan, J. A. (1997). Lost in a shopping mail: An experience with controversial research. Ethics & Behavior, 7, 271-284. Ganaway, G. (1991, August).
• Alternative hypotheses regarding satanic ritual abuse memories. Presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco.
• Garry, M. , Manning, C. , Loftus, E. F. & Sherman, S. J. (1996). Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 208-214. Goleman, D. (1992, July 21).
• Childhood trauma: Memory or invention? New York Times, C1. Haney, D. Q. (1997, February).
• Studies suggest false memories are common in everyday life. Associated Press wire, AP-ws-02-15-97, l4l6est. Klein, R. B. (1995, June).
• The nature of memory: An interview with Prof. Elizabeth F. Loftus, Ph. D. Verdicts, Settlements & Tactics, 15(6), 191-195.
• Loftus, E. F. (1992, August 14-18). The reality of repressed memories. Speech presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association. (Cassette Recording No. 92-013). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Loftus, E. F. (1996). Memory distortion and false memory creation. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 24(3), 281-295.
• Loftus, E. F. , Coan, J. A. , & Pickrell, J. E. (1996). Manufacturing false memories using bits of reality. In L. M. Reder (Ed. ), Implicit memory and metacognition (pp. 195-220). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Loftus, E. F. , Feldman, J. , & Dashiell, R. (1995). The reality of illusory memories. In D. L. Schacter, J. T. Coyle, G. D. Fishbach, M. Mesulam, &L. E. Sullivan (Eds. ), Memory distortion: How minds, brains and societies reconstruct the past. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Loftus, E. F. , & Ketcham, K. (1994). The myth of repressed memory. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Loftus, E. F. , ;amp; Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720-725. Morrison, J. (1996, December).

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Readers of Ethics and Behavior have been treated to a misrepresentation of my research on planting false memories, to a misstatement of the actual empirical finidngs, and to a distortion of the history of the development of the idea for this line of research. The partisan essay by Crook and Dean which appears in this issue ("'Lost in a Shopping Mall' -- A Breach of Professional Ethics") is disturbing not only because of its errors, exaggerations, and omissions, but because, in some instances, the quality of the argument makes one wonder whether these were innocent mistakes or a deliberate attempt to distort my work. Some of these errors can be explained by simple lack of scientific competence. However, others are sufficiently bizarre that they cast doubt on the process that led to the acceptance of a manuscript written by an individual who has continually made her animosity toward me very publicly known (e.g., Boerner, 1996; Neimark, 1996).

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Shopper swallowed as shopping mall floor collapses in eastern China

Dramatic vision has emerged of a woman being swallowed up as the floor of a shopping centre suddenly collapses in eastern China.

The woman was shopping on the second level of a mall in the city of Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province when a security camera captured the incident.

A construction worker was working on the floor below when the collapse happened, according to the People's Daily Jiangsu. 

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Mr Huang, the representative of the mall, told reporters at the scene that both were injured but in a stable condition. 

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What the Suburb Haters Don’t Understand

The homogeneity of the suburbs has an upside: If strip malls and subdivisions remind you of home, you can feel nostalgic almost anywhere.

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If you listen to the experts, much of the place I’m from is not a place at all. Suburban Michigan is full of winding roads dotted with identical houses, strip malls stuffed with chain restaurants and big-box stores, and thoroughfares designed for cars, with pedestrian walkways as an afterthought. The anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term non-places to describe interchangeable, impersonal spaces lacking in history and culture that people pass through quickly and anonymously. Non-places—such as shopping centers, gas stations, and highways—can be found everywhere but seem to particularly proliferate in suburbs like the one I grew up in. The writer James Howard Kunstler memorably called this sort of landscape “the geography of nowhere.”

In his book of the same title, Kunstler traces the history of the suburbs from the Puritans’ 17th-century conception of private property up to the early 1990s, when The Geography of Nowhere was published. He argues that, enamored with both automobiles and the sheer amount of space in this country, the U.S. built a sprawling empire of suburbs because, as he puts it, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” But this arrangement has proved to be “deeply demoralizing and psychologically punishing,” he told me in an email—not only because the design of suburbia is unsightly but because it is at odds with human connection and flourishing. He doesn’t mince words about what he sees as the consequences of this way of life, writing in his book that “the immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible,” and suggesting that America has become “a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about.”

This sort of dismissal is a common posture, though few have put it quite so colorfully. Perhaps because of the sometimes bland and homogenous built environment, many people assume the suburbs have a conformist culture too. These places have long been associated with boredom , with a vague, free-floating malaise. (Or, as one writer bluntly put it , “You know it sucks, but it’s hard to say exactly why.”) There is a Subreddit with 60,000 members called “Suburban Hell.” All of this adds up to a popular conception of suburbs as indistinct and interchangeable—they are “ no-man’s-land ,” the “middle of nowhere.” And this idea doesn’t come only from city slickers sneering at “flyover country.” Jason Diamond, the author of the book The Sprawl , said in an interview with Bloomberg that he’s noticed a “self-hatred” among people who come from suburbia.

From the September 1996 issue: Home from nowhere

Yet the majority of Americans live in this “nowhere.” Being precise about the proportion of the U.S. that is suburbia is difficult—the federal government, in much of its data, doesn’t distinguish “suburban” as a category distinct from “rural” and “urban” (perhaps implying that it, too, considers these places not worth caring about). But in the 2017 American Housing Survey , the government asked people to describe their own neighborhoods, and 52 percent classified them as suburban. These neighborhoods aren’t frozen 1950s stereotypes, either; they are evolving places. For instance, once synonymous with segregation, the suburbs are now more diverse than ever .

The point is: A lot of life happens in these places. Where there is life, there is connection and emotion. Where there is connection and emotion, nostalgia follows. And so, yes, decades of policy decisions and corporate development have led to what Kunstler calls the “depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading” landscapes of the suburbs. But at the same time, many people who have called these places home still have a sentimental connection to them, any spiritual degradation notwithstanding. And a curious side effect of the ubiquity of suburban institutions is that I can feel that small spark of recognition—of, dare I say it, “home”—anywhere I encounter it.

To defend my hometown, in part, from the accusations of cultural blandness and lack of history: Ypsilanti, Michigan, is the home of Domino’s Pizza! Of the world’s most phallic building ! We were once held in inexplicable thrall for several months to a turkey that camped out in an intersection ! Most suburban places, I have to imagine, have their own quirks and unique histories if you care to look for them. But it is also true that for my hometown and many others, these charms are mixed in with, or even obscured by, a whole lot of nowhere.

Read: The turkey in the left turn lane

Much of my youth was spent in these non-places: celebrating birthdays at a strip-mall Red Lobster, my sisters and I shoving Cheddar Bay biscuits in our purses for later; looking out of car windows at beige subdivisions on one side, cornfields on the other; messing around in Target with my friends just for something to do; depending on automobiles to go anywhere or do anything. Would I have been happier, healthier, more independent in a more walkable city? Would my relationships have been richer if we had more intentionally designed public spaces ? That’s what macro-level arguments about urban design would seem to imply, but on an individual level, those questions are unanswerable. It was what it was. Sure, I once got lost trying to go for a walk in our subdivision, turned around by the endlessly looping streets. But we did have a lot of fun at Target.

I haven’t lived in Ypsilanti since I was 17, decamping first to a college campus north of Chicago, then to Chicago proper, then to Washington, D.C., where I’ve lived for more than 10 years. Yet at the risk of being one of the “apologists for the ubiquitous highway crud” whom Kunstler derides in his book, I must say that even after all this time, I feel at home in a strip mall. It is familiar; it is my heritage. At least once a year, the winds blow in from the Midwest, and I cannot rest until I make a pilgrimage to an Olive Garden. If home is “nowhere,” and nowhere has spread almost everywhere, then many places can remind you of home.

I know that I’m not the only one who feels a real emotional connection to the corporate trappings of suburbia. The food website Eater had a long-running series of essays called “ Life in Chains ,” in which writers reflected on the ways chain restaurants had shaped them. One of my favorite icebreakers is to ask people to build the strip mall of their dreams using five chain establishments—and people get very passionate in their responses. (If you’re wondering, mine are: Target, Barnes and Noble, Panera Bread, Ulta, and an AMC movie theater.) During the early pandemic, a writer for Vice found herself longing for the experience of wandering the aisles of a TJ Maxx—and the regular Sundays she spent there with her mother.

Read: Revenge of the suburbs

Of course, people do crave specificity in the places they’re from, even in suburbia. I think the particular passion people have for those slightly more regional chains—Californians and In-N-Out Burger, southerners and Waffle House — is evidence of that. No one wants to feel like they’re from nowhere. But life happens where you are, and if where you are is a strip mall by a highway on-ramp, well, you work with what you’ve got.

Admittedly, an aspect of this is sad. For some children of the suburbs, we can feel like our formative tastes and our earliest emotions were hijacked by consumer culture and decades of zoning law. But nostalgia isn’t really a reflection of whether something is good or bad, researchers tell me; quality is essentially irrelevant. What matters is whether something holds meaning for you . And places are “easy for us to attach emotionality to,” Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology at Le Moyne College who studies nostalgia, told me. Although suburban nostalgia might be stronger for people like me who’ve moved away from the burbs, a place can be an active part of your life and still “cue those old memories” each time you visit, Clay Routledge, a psychologist who directs the Human Flourishing Lab at the nonprofit think tank Archbridge Institute, told me.

Is Taco Bell a gaudy restaurant that serves cheap sodium bombs that all taste basically the same and bear only a passing resemblance to actual Mexican cuisine? Definitely. But I’ll always love it, not just because I think it’s delicious but because that’s where my high-school friends and I would go to pick up sacks of 99-cent bean burritos to bring back for dinner when drama rehearsal was scheduled to run late. So Taco Bell bean burritos, to me, taste like staying at school until 9 p.m. and trying to do homework on the side of the stage between scenes, like the intense friendships of a ragtag group of teens figuring out who they are by pretending to be other people.

“People make a place, and that’s what nostalgia reveals,” Routledge said. Research on what makes people attached to a place shows that the social ties associated with it are a huge factor. In a survey that Routledge did last year, he found that almost three-quarters of Americans reported that their nostalgic memories were associated with close friends and family, as opposed to experiences they had with strangers or alone. Nostalgia for place, it seems, is really nostalgia for people.

The case against suburbia’s design is not just that it’s ugly and repetitive and kind of basic—it’s that it’s actively bad for community. Third places —spots just for hanging out, aside from work or home—are in short supply; homes are clustered far from commercial zones, making it next to impossible to walk safely anywhere. “The only way to be in that public realm is to be in a car, often alone,” Kunstler writes. “Where, then, are you going to have your public assembly? On the median strip of Interstate 87?” Some research suggests that people who live in more walkable neighborhoods are more likely to know their neighbors, and to feel a sense of community.

So this sense of nostalgia for “nowhere” represents, in a sense, the connections I made in a place that is hostile to connection by design. “In every corner of the nation we have built places unworthy of love,” Kunstler writes, and perhaps he’s right. But we love there nonetheless.

This tension is fitting, because nostalgia itself is a “conflicted and bittersweet” emotion, Batcho said. It tugs the homesick person between past and present, between how things were, how they are, and how they could be. Rachel Heiman, an associate professor of anthropology at the New School and the author of Driving After Class , told me that she fears the connection people have to the kinds of spaces they’re familiar with could be a detriment to building new and better kinds of communities. “We can’t just keep building our suburbs the way we are, even if some people are nostalgic for that,” she said. She gave the example of someone who feels safer and more comfortable driving a car than riding public transit, even though public transit is objectively safer . Might they be resistant to supporting new bus or rail routes in their community?

But both Batcho and Routledge told me that contrary to its popular perception as an emotion that holds people back, nostalgia can also be fuel for progress. It can make people more creative , inspired , and motivated: Reflecting on cherished memories of the past can remind people of what they really value. And if there’s a disconnect between what we loved about the past and the way things are now, “that discrepancy can easily remind us that we should move forward,” Batcho said. “We should build better things.”

The feeling that your past is coherently tied to your present and your future is called “self-continuity,” and Routledge’s research shows that nostalgia facilitates it . So feeling nostalgic for the landscapes of suburbia doesn’t necessarily mean I think that’s the best way to design a community—it’s just part of my story. My soft spot for Olive Garden’s huge portions of mediocre fettuccine alfredo is just the vessel for the things I actually value: the feeling of belonging to a place and its people, the comforts of accumulated memories that adhere to spaces.

In the end, whether the suburbs collapse or we build better ones, it’s too late for me—the strip malls are already in my bones.

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THE 10 BEST Shopping & Malls in Basmanny (Moscow)

Shopping & malls in basmanny.

• Gift & Speciality Shops
• Art Galleries
• Antique Stores
• Flea & Street Markets
• Shopping Malls
• Factory Outlets
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 2.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3rd Transport Ring (TTK)
• District Central (TsAO)
• Garden Ring
• Boulevard Ring
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Budget-friendly
• Good for Kids
• Good for Big Groups
• Hidden Gems
• Honeymoon spot
• Adventurous
• Good for Couples
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Artplay Design and Architecture Center

2. Watercolor School of Sergeya Andriyaki

3. Shopping-Entertainment Complex Atrium

4. GROUND Solyanka

5. 818 Vintage

6. Vintage Heritage

7. Svoya Polka

8. Graphic House

9. Osnova Gallery

10. FotoLoft Gallery

11. Regina Gallery

12. Perlov Tea House

13. Fusion Art Gallery

14. Art Brut

15. Vinyl Record Store DiG

16. Gallery 21

17. ART SEVERINA

18. Expo-88 Art Gallery

19. elysium gallery.

20. Yelokhovskiy Passage

21. totibadze gallery, 22. xl galereya exhibition centre, 23. vincent art gallery.

24. Outlet Cornery

25. l'accent russe gallery boutique.

26. J&J Davies Gallerie Art Gallery

27. VS unio art gallery

28. BersoAntik Gallery

29. Strogo Vintage

What travellers are saying

THE BEST Shopping Malls in Presnensky (Moscow)

Shopping malls in presnensky.

• Art Galleries
• Gift & Specialty Shops
• Shopping Malls
• Antique Stores
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3rd Transport Ring (TTK)
• District Central (TsAO)
• District Western (ZAO)
• Garden Ring
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Good for Kids
• Budget-friendly
• Good for Big Groups
• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Good for Couples
• Honeymoon spot
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Afimoll City

2. Bagration Bridge

3. Tishinka Trade and Exhibition Complex

4. Biznes Tsentr Veb.rf

What travelers are saying.

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Off the Menu

Lola’s Offers a Southern Spin on Filipino Cooking

Alaluna offers dry-aged fish with an Italian approach, Bon Bon serves up Swedish hot dogs and more restaurant news.

By Florence Fabricant

The chef Suzanne Cupps is honoring her lola (grandmother in Filipino) Annunciasion Rocamora Paraiso with this new restaurant that pays tribute to her courage during World War II. The menu reflects Ms. Cupp’s experiences growing up in Aiken, S.C., and working in New York with the chefs Anita Lo and Michael Anthony. Expect seasonal dishes like Southern stuffed clams, fried tilefish lettuce wraps with kohlrabi slaw, country rib skewers, and stir-fried egg noodles with early spring greens and silk chile crisp. The beverage director, Adrienne Vanni, has sought value on the wine list, with many options under $100 and several nonalcoholic choices. There is a bar up front and tables at green banquettes that follow back to the emerald tile open kitchen with a terrazzo counter where the chef will be at work. (Opens Thursday)

2 West 28th Street, 646-941-4787, lolasnyc.com .

The downtown group of Italian shopping and eating areas called Travelers Poets and Friends is now complete with the addition of this intimate spot for seafood by the executive chef and partner Riccardo Orfino. The emphasis is on dry-aged fish. Exposing fish to air, a Japanese technique that’s gaining ground, reduces moisture to the benefit of fat and succulence. Mr. Orfino takes it to Italy with a cured fish plate, aged bonito tartare and smoked yellowtail agnolotti. The restaurant is next to the all-day bistro in the space.

467 Avenue of the Americas (11th Street), 212-420-0057, travelerspoetsandfriends.com .

Mala Hot Pot

This is not the first Chinese restaurant named málà, meaning numbing and spicy, as known best in Sichuan food. The partner Kevin Chen, formerly of Tang Hotpot, and the chef Yi Bin Yang, from Sichuan, offer a raft of ingredients including prime and Wagyu beef, assorted vegetables and innards like tripe, duck blood and pork artery to simmer in broth. The setting is industrial.

35 West 36th Street, 646-582-4049, malahotpotnyc.com .

Brooklyn Art Haus in Williamsburg now has its own restaurant next door. The kitchen is run by the chefs Naama Tamir and her brother, Assaf Tamir, who own Lighthouse Restaurant nearby. The menu, which emphasizes sustainability, is mainly Middle Eastern and will expand to cover more of the Mediterranean. (Saturday)

20 Marcy Avenue (Metropolitan Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 929-397-0000, themouthbk.com .

Dinner at Shlomo’s

This supper club, tucked inside Comodo restaurant and named for the “Law Office of Shlomo and Shlomo” found on a door in the restaurant’s cellar, will offer chef’s dinners, $150. From Thursday through Saturday the chef will be Elly Fraser, who had a restaurant, Elly’s, in Mexico City and is now cooking in New York. From April 18 to 20, the chef will be Carolina Santos-Neves of Comodo. (Thursday)

Freehand New York, 23 Lexington Avenue (23rd Street), 212-475-1924, [email protected] .

Universal Taco

Franklin Becker has changed the name and concept of what was Oliva Tapas in the food hall on Columbia University’s uptown campus. It now takes a global approach to tacos with fillings like Jamaican braised oxtail and lamb gyro along with traditional choices like al pastor. (April 9)

3229 Broadway (130th Street), manhattanvillemarket.com/universaltaco .

Grain de Sail

For nearly 15 years, a sailing fleet based in Morlaix, France, in Brittany, has been ferrying chocolate and coffee from Latin America back to France as a sustainable alternative to engine-powered shipping. It makes stopovers in New York to deliver French products. This weekend the modern cargo schooner Grain de Sail will be open to visitors at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. for tours and tastings of French wines and chocolates in an event presented by the South Street Seaport Museum. Tickets include admission to a companion program on the tall ship Wavertree docked nearby. (Saturday and Sunday)

Pier 17 North Side, seaport district, seaportmuseum.org/grain-de-sail .

Chef on the Move

Caroline schiff.

This executive pastry chef at Gage & Tollner in Downtown Brooklyn since it reopened nearly four years ago is leaving. Kathryn Irizarry is now the head pastry chef. Ms. Schiff’s own diner in partnership with Tori Ciambriello, the restaurant’s manager, is on the horizon.

Looking Ahead

The refinery at domino.

The chef James Kent of Crown Shy and Saga at 70 Pine Street in the financial district and his Saga Hospitality Group will cross the East River later this year. Destiny? The address is 300 Kent Avenue. They have leased 3,000 square feet of space from Two Trees Management on the ground floor of the former Domino Sugar refinery for a bakery and a casual all-day restaurant. The bakery is to be run by Renata Ameni, the executive pastry chef of the Saga Hospitality Group. It will also provide access to the public for ice cream and other items through a window facing Domino Park. It was not lost on Ms. Ameni that she will be turning out confections in a former sugar factory.

300 Kent Avenue (South Second Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

In addition to stores in Manhattan and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Swedish candy juggernaut has now opened its Brooklyn warehouse on weekends, for a fourth retail option. Hundreds of imported candy choices fill shelves and bins, and there’s a candy library. On Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., lines form for Swedish-style hot dogs, snappy sausages fully loaded with sweet pickles, relish, mustard, crisp fried onions and a choice of creamy rémoulade or Swedish shrimp salad piled in a bun, $6.

66 Degraw Street (Van Brunt Street), Columbia Street Waterfront District, Brooklyn, bonbonnyc.com .

Levain Bakery

The 14th outlet of this chain of bakeries known for their heavy-duty cookies will be selling a version of the iconic New York black-and-white. Theirs, a nearly black dark chocolate mound of cookie riddled throughout with white and dark chocolate chunks, is almost a photographic negative of a chocolate chip cookie. It’s $5.75 and only at this new location. (Friday)

2 West 18th Street, 646-974-5901, levainbakery.com .

Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .

An earlier version of this article misidentified the number of Levain Bakery locations. It is 14, not 10.

How we handle corrections

Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks. More about Florence Fabricant

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