Are All of Our Memories Real?

As human beings, our experiences and major life events are fundamental in shaping who we become. We hold these memories very dearly to our heart, and with reason. We rationalize that to lose these memories would be to lose our identity. However, what if these memories were not completely real; what if we fabricated part of these memories?

In How we are, Vicent Deary, a psychologist at Northumbria University, explains that our brain, the most incredible and complex thing known to man, is not equipped to keep perfect records of memories. It would take too much time, energy, and space to do so. At best, our brain only keeps very good records for a few days. For long term purposes, it keeps only the gist of memories - central information that is enough to keep the memory alive. When we try to recover that memory in detail, our brain will recover the gist of it, and for the details, it will guess a probable version of what happened.

Below is an excerpt from Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, by Leonard Mlodinow:

P. 60-61

"After a talk on criminology in Berlin, a student stood up and shouted a challenge to the distinguished speaker, one Professor Franz von Liszt, a cousin of the composer Franz Liszt. Another student jumped to his feet to defend von Liszt. An argument ensued. The first student pulled out a gun. The other student rushed to him. The von Liszt joined the fray. Amid the chaos, the gun went off. The entire room erupted into bedlam. Finally, von Liszt shouted for order, saying it was all a ruse. The two enraged students weren't really students at all, but actors following a script. The altercation had been part of a grand experiment. The purpose of the exercise? To test everyone's powers of observation and memory. Nothing like a fake shootout in psych class to liven things up.

After the event, von Liszt divided the audience into groups. One group was asked immediately write an account of what they had seen, another was cross-examined in person, and other were asked to write reports a little later. In order to quantify the accuracy of the reports, von Liszt divided the performance into fourteen bite-sized components, some referring to people's actions, others to what they said. He counted as errors omissions, alterations, and additions. The students' error rates varied from 26 to 80 percent. Actions that never occurred were attributed to the actors. Other important actions were missed. Words were put into the arguing students' mouths, and even into the mouths of students who had said nothing."

The problem with this happening, is that details can change a memory dramatically. This inaccurate guessing by our brain has caused many conflicts, from couples arguing over what happened on their first date, to witnesses giving wrong information at trials - without knowing that they were doing so.

It's pretty scary to think that some of our most important memories are not 100% accurate: Our first kiss, our wedding day, our child's birth, or the day that a loved one passed away... My best advice is to remember that it did happen, and although it may not have happened exactly how you think it did, in many cases, the gist of it and the emotion associated with that memory is all you really need.

As Mlodinow explains, from an evolutionary perspective, our memory is efficient and accurate. It has allowed our ancestors to remember the safest way back to camp, which creatures to avoid, and where to search for food.

Thanks for reading!

Best,
Pedro