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Gaslighting occurs when another person tries to convince you that your memory has failed.

A new study puts close relationship partners into situations that test the tendency to believe misinformation.

Knowing how fallible memory can be is the first step to counteracting the manipulative ways of the gaslighter.

No one’s memory is perfect, a fact that some people take advantage of when exploiting or trying to control their partners. Nicky felt pretty certain that she correctly remembered a rather sensitive and potentially inappropriate question her boyfriend, Pete, asked her on their first date. The topic concerned Nicky’s previous relationship partner. The question made her feel uncomfortable, but she was willing to give her boyfriend a pass. Now, six weeks later, he completely denies having asked the question.

This could boil down to a simple misunderstanding if it were not for the fact that Pete seemed to cause Nicky to question her memory on a pretty regular basis. Now, she rarely trusts her own version of past events but relies almost completely on Pete’s reconstruction of their past interactions. Indeed, these reconstructions usually favor Pete, making him look like a generally good guy, if not a saint.

The Vagaries of Memory Reconstruction

Research on memory has established quite solidly the fact that recall of the past is subject to a variety of distortions. Apart from simple forgetting, people tend to shave off unpleasant features of past experiences to make themselves look better. It’s also remarkably easy to confuse who said what and when in social situations.

Gaslighting occurs when the memory slip isn’t just some innocent moment of forgetfulness. People who gaslight do this deliberately, knowing full well that the version of events they’d have you believe is not the version of events that truly happened.

According to University of Sydney’s Lillian Darke and colleagues (2025), people tend to believe memories that fit in with some larger version of their own reality, and this makes them susceptible to gaslighting. “Individuals are consistently engaging with their surroundings to validate their own memories,” they note, meaning that you may fill in some memory lapses with what you believe you’d be most likely to do in a given situation. You may think you turned off the light before you left your home, because you always do. This memory would be false if in fact you left the light on.

In gaslighting, another person creates a false version of reality that you might believe because it seems to fit in with a larger version of the truth. Pete takes advantage of Nicky’s faith in him as a good guy who would never put her on the spot.

Testing the False Memory Theory of Gaslighting

In an innovative experimental study, Darke et al. put close romantic partners into a “memory conformity paradigm” in which one partner challenged the memory of the other. The experiment took place over four sessions. In the first session, participants selected joint memories without telling each other the details. In the week between sessions one and two, the experimenter randomly selected one partner to provide and the other to receive misinformation. For example, the memory could include details of a dinner the couple had together. In the misinformation session, the gaslighting partner purposely read out the wrong details and, per experimenter instructions, insisted that these details were correct. After this, both participants completed the memory questionnaire again. The experimental question was whether the misinformation would change the gaslit partner’s memory. Participants also rated their confidence in their recall.

Overall, the manipulation worked. Slightly over one-quarter changed their own recall of events to match that of their partners. Even if they didn’t adopt the partner’s descriptions, they expressed open uncertainty about their own recall.

Going beyond misinformation, the Australian study also showed that it’s possible for a trusted person to undermine an individual’s belief in their own memory accuracy. Because the misinformation manipulation was just a one-off and not a repeated experience, it wasn’t possible to determine whether partners who constantly are gaslighted become worn down and hopeless, as is shown in real-life gaslighting situations.

Counteracting the Gaslighter

Adding to gaslighting’s effect in the Darke et al. study was, according to the authors, the elements of relationship trust and social conformity. Gaslighters operate within close relationships by inserting themselves in the space between certainty and uncertainty in the mind of the gaslit partner. People in close relationships have, note the authors, “the motivation to align memories due… to the social costs of disagreement.” Nicky didn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with Pete, so she went along with his explanation.

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Returning to the idea of social context, the U. Sydney study shows how a close relationship can become the context for inserting false memories. What’s more, the closer the relationship, the more likely it is that being fed misinformation will create more and more doubt in the gaslit partner. Why should you believe your own fallible memory when the person you love is telling you otherwise?

It should be noted that gaslighting is increasingly being understood as an aspect of interpersonal violence and coercive relationships. The authors caution that because memory can be so fallible and manipulated, individuals who may be vulnerable to this form of emotional abuse can gain from understanding just how easy it is from a cognitive standpoint to change someone’s recollection of the past.

To sum up, gaslighting takes advantage of several known fallibilities in ordinary memory, especially the tendency to rely on context and the word of someone you trust. Self-efficacy, the belief in your own memory, and trust in yourself can be two powerful tools to counter gaslighting’s powerful pull.

Darke, L., Paterson, H., & van Golde, C. (2025). Gaslighting and memory: the effects of partner-led challenges on recall and self-perception. Memory, 33(7), 828–844. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2025.2533253

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