If you have ever met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, I hope you have a photo
Three interesting articles on memory. The first is from the Frontal Cortex and it is a great summary of the second article which is an eight-part series on Slate’s experiment in altering political truths. What Slate has done is to create four political myths and then inserted them into news stories (like 1984’s Ministry of Truth). Then, Slate surveyed their readers to determine who picked up on the fakes.
Many readers picked out the fakes. But, of the ones who didn’t, they were sure they remembered the incident. The numbers rose when people were shown faked photos of the mythical events. In some cases, people had elaborate memories surrounding the faked event.
Why does this happen? Because, as Frontal Cortex explains, we reconstruct our memories every time we remember something. And the more we remember something, the less accurate it becomes as we reconsolidate the memory. We start adding new interpretations to remembered events and we add details that were not possible at the time of the memory.
Why isn’t memory a fixed and unchanging mental construct? One possible answer could be in the third article – “Modeling the mobility of living organisms in heterogeneous landscapes: Does memory improve foraging success?” This research article describes how foraging animals who inject some randomness into their search are seven times more effective than foragers who rely on their memory of past finds when both are searching in a changed landscape.
So, could reconstructing memories give us an advantage by allowing us to incorporate later experiences and thus we have a better understanding of past events that can guide us in current problem solving? Are our imperfect memories a way to inject randomness into our thought processes and make us more effective thinkers?
This is why it is always a good idea to make notes when we need to remember something important or significant. I have found that revisiting a journal entry from years past is always surprising because my memory of the event usually differs from what I wrote at the time. Even photos can be a great check on our memories.
Unless you do have a photo of you meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Then you know that someone has faked the photo.
Tags: false memories, forgetting, memory