The Elusive Nature of Memory

Our memory is something we heavily rely on, whether it be routine tasks like writing or recognizing a distant relative, it all relies on our memories, one kind or the other. For something so significant to us, it’s no wonder we might see our memories as infallible. In reality, we couldn’t be further from the truth.

Our memories, even long term ones, are constantly evolving and often amend themselves in view of new information pertaining to past events. Memories can frequently get altered and sometimes completely false memories can develop, in a phenomenon known as Confabulation. This fact is the most sought after rational explanation of the so-called Mandela Effect. Extensive evaluation of the Mandela Effect can be read on the self-titled article on this website.

An interesting feature of our memories are how we recollect them years after the events that etched them. Memories tend to curve either towards the negative experiences or positive depending on one’s age. Namely, the Negativity Bias and the Positivity Bias, younger adults are more susceptible to the former while people aged 60 or above generally experience the latter. This paper is an excellent read if you’re interested in the topic in detail.
But this should not be confused with Rosy Retrospection, which is a phenomenon where events seem more favourable in retrospect than when they actually occurred. In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, cyclists were surveyed before, during and after a three-week bicycle tour of California. Many told stories of excessive rain, physical exhaustion and unamusing companions. However, retrospective accounts were considerably rosier.

While we’re talking of retrospective memory biases, the Hindsight Bias is a worthy mention. Also known as creeping determinism, it is when people view the outcomes of an event as predictable after they have occurred, even though they had no tangible evidence to predict them. The knew-it-all-along effect as it’s informally called can cause memory distortions similar to the phenomenon of Confabulation discussed above. It is a real problem in situations where precise recollections are essential.The ability to analyse, perceive and interpret experimental studies can be impaired by this phenomenon. Judiciary systems can also be impaired when relying on eyewitness testimonies.

To provide a perspective upon how our cognition is affected by changing technology, let’s discuss the aptly named Google Effect or digital amnesia. People hardly remember information that is easily accessible online. With the ever-expanding internet essentially becoming an extension of our brain, maybe it’s not a bad thing after all.

While reading about the above cognitive and memory biases might have been amusing, the fun

runs out when we discover our own blind spots. We might tend to think that we are impervious to these biases and what we remember is the objective truth, but we couldn’t be more wrong. This view of ourselves as being unbiased is called the Bias Blind Spot and is a true view of ourselves through the looking glass. We might actively know of the fallacies in our perceptions, but that isn’t going to stop them from affecting us.