Memories

In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington conducted a study in which people watched films of car crashes. She then asked the participants to estimate how fast the cares were going, but she divided the people into groups and asked the question differently for each.

The word changes included: smashed, collided, bumped, hit, and contacted.

Just by changing the wording, the memories of the subjects were altered. Loftus raised the ante by asking the same people if they remembered the broken glass in the film. There was no broken glass, but sure enough the people who were given the word “smashed” in their question were twice as likely to remember seeing it.

Since then, hundreds of experiments into the misinformation effect have been conducted, and people have been convinced of all sorts of things. Screwdrivers become wrenches, white men become black men and experiences involving other people get traded back and forth.

Memory is imperfect, but also constantly changing. Not only do you filter your past through your present, but your memory is easily infected by social contagion. You incorporate the memories of others into your own head all the time. Studies suggest your memory is permeable, malleable, and evolving. It isn’t fixed and permanent, but more like a dream that pulls information about what you are thinking about during the day and adds new details to the narrative.

David McRaney, You are Not so Smart

A learning strategy that has shown clear results

Retrieval practice sometimes (shows) effects some 50 percent more than other forms of learning. In one study, one group of subjects read a passage four times. A second group read the passage just one time, but then the same group practiced recalling the passage three times.

But when the researchers followed up with both groups a few days later, the group that had practiced recalling the passage learned significantly more. In other words, subjects who tried to recall the information instead of rereading it showed far more expertise.

What’s important about retrieval practice is that people take steps to recall what they know. They ask themselves questions about their knowledge, making sure that it can be produced.

More concretely, retrieval practice isn’t like a multiple-choice test, which has people choose from a few answers, or even a Scrabble game, where you hunt in your memory for a high-point word. Retrieval practice is more like writing a five-sentence essay in your head: You’re recalling the idea and summarizing it in a way that makes sense.

As psychologist Bob Bjork told me, “The act of retrieving information from our memories is a powerful learning event.”

Ulrich Boser, Learn Better

Imagination inflation can lead to false memories

Imagination inflation refers to the tendency of people who, when asked to imagine an event vividly, will sometimes begin to believe, when asked about it later, that the event actually occurred. Adults who were asked "Did you ever break a window with your hand?" were more likely on a later life inventory to report that they believe this event occurred during their lifetimes. It seems that asking the question led them to imagine the event, and the act of having imagined it had the effect, later, of making them more likely to think it had occurred (relative to other group answer the question not having previously imagined it occurring).

Accounts that sound familiar can create the feeling of knowing and be mistaken for true. This is one reason that political or advertising claims that are not factual but are repeated can gain traction with the public, particularly if they have emotional resonance. Something you once heard that you hear again later carries a warmth of familiarity that can be mistaken for memory, a shred of something you once knew and cannot quite place but are inclined to believe. In the world propaganda, this is called "the big lie" technique—even a big lie told repeatedly can come to be accepted as truth.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Sharing photos may subtly change how we remember

When we’re hunting for the perfect Instagram shot, we’re not listening, we’re not smelling, we’re not always paying attention to the beautiful, complex minutiae that make up the moment. 

Powerful experiences in the real world are immersive and often engage all the senses. On your last vacation, can you remember what the wind felt like on your back? Do you remember what was going on internally: Were you thrilled, excited, or scared? When you look back on the Instagram photos from the trip, will you remember what a dinner tasted like, or just that it was pretty? 

Brian Resnick writing in Vox

Glory in the Flower

That though the radiance which was once so bright

be now forever taken from my sight.

Though nothing can bring back

the hour of splendor in the grass,

glory in the flower.

We will grieve not,

rather find strength in what remains behind.

William Wordsworth

Memories are Overrated

A comment I heard from a member of the audience after a lecture illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing memories from experiences. He told of listening raptly to a long symphony on a disc that was scratched near the end, producing a shocking sound, and he reported that the bad ending “ruined the whole experience.” But the experience was not actually ruined, only the memory of it. The experience itself was almost entirely good, and the bad end could not undo it, because it had already happened. My questioner had assigned the entire episode a failing grade because it had ended very badly, but that grade effectively ignored 40 minutes of musical bliss. Does the actual experience count for nothing?

Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion – and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keep score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.

We have strong preferences about the duration of our experiences of pain and pleasure. We want pain to be brief and pleasure to last. But our memory (represents) the most intense moments of an episode of pain or pleasure and the feelings when the episode was at its end. A memory that neglects duration will not serve our preferences for long pleasure and short pains.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Ambiguity and narrative

The discomfort with ambiguity and arbitrariness is equally powerful, or more so, in our need for a rational understanding of our lives. We strive to fit the events of our lives into a coherent story that accounts for our circumstances, the things that follow us, and the choices we make. Each of us has a different narrative that has many threads woven into it from our shared culture and experience of being human, as well as many distinct threads that explain the singular events of one's personal past. All these experiences influence what comes to mind in a current situation and the narrative through which you make sense of it: why nobody in my family attended college until me. Why my father never made a fortune in business. Why I'd never want to work in a corporation, or, maybe, why I would never want to work for myself. We gravitate to the narratives that best explain our emotions. In this way, narrative and memory become one. The memories we organize meaningfully become those that are better remembered. Narrative provides not only meaning but also a mental framework for imbuing future experiences andinformation with meaning, in effort shaping new memories to fit our establish constructs of the world and ourselves. The narrative of memory becomes central to our intuitions regarding the judgments we make and the actions we take. Because memory is a shape-shifter, reconciling the competing demands of emotions, suggestions, and narrative, it serves you well to stay open to the fallibility of your certainties: even your most cherished memories may not represent events in the exact way they occurred.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning