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We tend to think that our memory is a reliable device for storing information. Something in it, of course, is not retained, but if we remember something, then we can easily appeal to it. However, the psychology of memory is not so simple: what is recorded in the cells of our memory, in fact, is not always part of objective reality.
So in her story “The Death of the Moon”, the writer Vera Inber described the metamorphoses taking place in the psychology of memory. Memories that are stored in our memory do not remain unchanged. They can not only fade, but also acquire completely new details that were not there before. Memory errors have been known to repeatedly lead to misunderstandings during legal proceedings.
This is what caught the attention of Elizabeth Loftus, who has been involved in memory issues for decades and has repeatedly become a witness and expert in cases where an unjust sentence was based on the false memories of witnesses. She wondered where in the memories come from details that were not in reality. Why do people remember things that didn’t happen, or remember events that are completely different from how they actually happened? In other words, how memory actually works and where “false memories” come from.
How False Memories Are Created
1. Our memory can be “rewritten”
Through a series of experiments, Loftus discovered that memories can be implanted into someone’s mind. For example, when a person is deliberately misinformed immediately after an event, or if he is asked leading questions about the past.
In one of Loftus’s experiments, subjects were shown pictures of road accidents. After viewing them, the experimenter asked questions. One group was asked to simply list the damage they remembered, while the other was asked leading questions: “Did you notice that the car had a broken headlight?” The result was stunning: the respondents of the second group distorted their own memories twice as often.
It turns out that our memories can not only change over time, but with the help of leading questions, an outsider can “correct” them. If we are gradually instilled with deliberately incorrect information about the events that happened to us, our ideas about the past can be distorted. We will remember what was not really there, and sincerely believe in the reality of what we allegedly experienced.
2. We are ready to believe in the impossible
In her experiments, Loftus implanted false memories in the subjects. Wondering whether it is possible to instill not only a single “broken headlight”, but also a holistic memory, she came to interesting conclusions. Some of the subjects perceived what they heard as their actual memory, and moreover, they added colorful details to it.
Interestingly, in addition to hypothetically possible memories (“you got lost in the supermarket when you were 5-6 years old”, “you almost drowned as a child”), the subjects were also inspired with a priori impossible memories. So, in one of the experiments, they were told that when they visited Disneyland, they talked with Bugs Bunny there. 16% of the subjects later reproduced this memory as their own, adding that they hugged the character and even heard his catchphrase from him (“What’s the matter, Doc?”).
At the same time, they were not at all embarrassed that Bugs Bunny was a character from the Warner Brothers studio, and therefore could not be in Disneyland.
3. Our memories are influenced by context.
Gary Marcus, director of the New York University Center for Children’s Language, says our memories are like audio recordings. At the same time, every time we reproduce them, we overwrite them in our memory, and therefore the context in which this reproduction takes place can be recorded along with the very essence of the memory and lead to memory errors.
It turns out that our memory is a very fragile thing. This does not mean that we absolutely cannot trust our memory, but it is worth considering that we all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to external influences.
Consequences of false memories
The question logically arises: do memory errors and false memories have consequences? What effect do they have on our behavior?
“Actually, we all really value our memories, they make up our life, or rather, our idea of life and about ourselves,” recalls Loftus. And since we do not have a mechanism by which we can accurately distinguish true memories from false ones, it is likely that false memories will be embedded in our personal history along with true ones.
To test this hypothesis, Loftus conducted the following experiment. Some of the subjects were told that they had poisoned themselves with strawberry ice cream as children. They ended up eliminating strawberry ice cream from their diet. A reverse experiment was also conducted: respondents were convinced that they were very fond of asparagus, and some participants in the experiment began to eat it in much larger quantities.
The psychic reality of a person is what happens, including in his fantasy. If a person does not have a strong enough ego, which is responsible for drawing the line between inside and outside, or when the ego is attacked (for example, through hypnosis or under the influence of stressful circumstances), this border can be erased. And then what happens inside (or what is suggested as internal) can be perceived as external. In other words, some of our fantasies may be imprinted in our memory as having happened in reality, leading to memory errors.
The psychology of memory is arranged very subtly, it is not just a set of memories of certain events, but it is also what a person thought about, dreamed about, what he felt. Loftus refutes the conventional wisdom that we are the sum of our memories. She draws attention to the other side: “Our essence is determined by our memory, but our memory is determined by what we are and what we tend to believe. Apparently, throughout our lives, we recreate our memory over and over again, reshape it and, in a sense, become the embodiment of our own fantasies.”