How Do Memories That You Can "Swear" To Be True Mislead You?
- In fact, from the beginning, he may not have seen a hammer stolen. He could only have said that because he heard a screwdriver was stolen from Amelia.
- He may remember that both the hammer and the screwdriver may have been stolen, but since Amelia called it a screwdriver, he may have trusted Amelia's memory more than his own.
- He may not have seen the hammer stolen, nor May he have heard Amelia say the screwdriver was stolen; but when the police gave him two options, he may have chosen one of the two at random.
- He may have actually seen a hammer stolen; but when Amelia mentioned a screwdriver, the moment he had it may have changed, suppressed or degraded.
Each of these is possible, and if the same theft occurred 4 times, 4 different people who were in Henry's place may have answered "screwdriver" for these 4 different reasons. In other words, individuals can come to the same conclusion by going through completely different cognitive processes. But what interests us in this article is the fourth possibility. This is called the erroneous information effect.
We don't yet know exactly what memory is or how it works. Even though you managed to make an observation of molecules to turn into memories, the memories exactly as they are stored, how they are called these memories to remember how the brain was in the right place, with memories intact, if at what level is disrupted, the brain, which preferred to save the memory of what level details such as how information will be ignored which are not clear.
Studies of each of these continue to come up with current and extremely interesting findings; for example, within the framework of a phenomenon known as memoir irony, we know that every time we access a memory in our memory, that memory deteriorates and weakens. Similarly, we also know that trying to photograph a moment reduces the likelihood that the moment will be remembered later. But we have a long way to go to create a holistic and satisfying theory of memories.
What Is A Fake Memory? How Does It Occur?
Another of the most interesting facts about memories is the concept of false memory. False memories are memories that we are almost 100% sure are true and experienced, but at least under experimental conditions, they can be objectively shown that they are not real. Chris French, who studies abnormal memories at the University of London, says:
"Not only do we distort the memories we have witnessed, but we can even produce memories of events that have never happened! These memories, in particular, can often be produced unintentionally or intentionally within the framework of some psychological experiments as a result of the use of psychotherapy techniques, the function of which is controversial."
For example, as a result of hypnosis and other indoctrination methods used during some psychotherapy sessions in the 1990s, a nurse's assistant named Nadean Cool was convinced that she was actually part of a satanist cult, that she had eaten babies, been raped, had sex with animals, and was forced to watch the murder of an 8-year-old friend. But independent investigations showed none of this was true. When the boy's parents sued the psychologist, the psychologist pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a $ 2.4 million fine. This is not the only legal case in which false memories have been knowingly or unknowingly placed.
The danger of this is clear: if the memories of eyewitnesses or victims are deliberately or without, it will further cast a shadow over the credibility of this evidence, which is often referenced in legal processes. We have already dealt with the issue of eyewitness credibility, but the concept of false memories adds an additional dimension to this problem. For example, in a study, 70% of participants were able to convince themselves that they had committed crimes of theft, assault, and even armed assault by placing false memories, even though they had never committed any crimes. All of them described these events, which never happened, in extremely complex detail and using a large number of sensory organs.
Mandela Effect: False Memories Can Reach Mass Size!
Previous studies have shown that false memories can be placed in the brains of mice using molecular methods, but a molecular intervention in the size of cells is not necessary to create a false memory. 20. Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California at Irvine, shown among the greatest psychologists of the century, says:
"In all the articles I've written, in all the lectures and seminars I've given, the main point I've tried to convey is that just because a person tells you something with all their credibility and in a very emotional way, in quite detail, doesn't mean that it actually happened. In order to make sure that a specific moment actually happened, that is, what we have is a real moment, more than one person needs to jointly verify that event. Otherwise, there is a possibility that it is a product of other processes."
Interestingly, even the fact that a large number of people claim the same thing is true does not guarantee that a moment is a real moment. Aside from the fact that the misconception that the claim of the majority has to be true risks becoming the fallacy of applying to the majority (argumentum ad populum), a large number of people may have a completely erroneous memory due to a psychological/sociological phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect.
Even more interestingly, false memories that are mass-remembered within the Mandela Effect, unlike folk myths and myths, do not arise from lies spread by a person or group (i.e., do not arise from the mythization of erroneous information spread on the internet). Rather, it is the product of a common misinterpretation of common experiences, perceptions, ideas.
However, the fact that more than one person confirms a specific event can increase our confidence in the reality of that moment. After all, in the absence of objective evidence (for example, camera footage) that an event actually happened, we have no other method than to confirm the memory of more than one person who was there at the time of the incident. But French warns:
"Even memories that we are extremely detailed, clear and 100% sure of their accuracy can be completely erroneous."
Faith and commitment to false memories is stronger!
In a 1989 study by Tversky and Tuchin, it was shown that people with false memories defend this false memory more strongly than the original memory. In the early example of theft and theft, individuals who had an erroneous memory that the "screwdriver" had been stolen had a much stronger belief that they had seen the screwdriver, even if they had actually seen the "hammer". However, this kind of self-confidence is not encountered in people who randomly choose one of the two options.
In other words, false memories not only cause erroneous conclusions to be reached, but also cause those erroneous conclusions to have unfounded self-confidence. About this, Salvador Dali famously said:
"The difference between fake memories and real memories is the same as jewelry: fake ones always look more real, brighter."
Situations Associated With False Memories
Biases Towards The Working Principles Of Memory
Interestingly, your thoughts on how the concept of" memory " works may be affecting the way your memories work. This is called metahafiza beliefs. For example, what happens to the memory of someone who has experienced trauma, your beliefs about whether lost memories can be restored, etc. your ideas can increase your belief that your memories, which you believe happened in the past, but are faint or fragmented, are "real."
For example, if you believe that thinking about an event that you believe happened in the past will strengthen your memories by bringing it into your mind, you will be more likely to place false memories when you do so to remember the event. In other words, the more flexible your views on the memorability of a memory, the more likely false memories will be to occur during the effort to remember memories.
Metamemory beliefs, with the ability to produce false memory, because it does not always have to be associated to one research, human diversity "false memory" feature is a property that do not clearly demonstrate the variable and diverse. Rather, this seems to occur as a situation caused by the combination of many external factors that are not directly related to each other. Let's look at some other elements found among these factors.
Creativity
As you can imagine, individuals with creative intelligence are more prone to creating false memories and believing them. Because the false memories created by these people have more intense detail, and therefore the brain is more likely to get stuck in them.
A sense of social desirability and social pressure
But creativity is not the only thing that gives fake memories their power; at the same time, any personality traits that increase the tendency to believe it, even if an event is fake, can affect it. At the beginning of these are a sense of social desirability and being under social pressure.
Both of these increase an individual's tendency to believe events, even if they are fake. Individuals who want to be socially desirable or are under social pressure can accept fake events as if they were real in order to better fit their group. They create events and memories associated with the group they are trying to fit in, because it is likely that they see the absence of such experiences as a "lack"; however, this does not mean that they consciously make this kind of false memory creation. Because of the need to belong to that group alone, individuals who think too much about issues related to that group are more likely to place false memories in their past.
Trauma
It is believed that the presence of trauma in an individual's past increases the likelihood that that individual will develop false memories in the future. This is particularly associated with childhood traumas. For example, children, due to their general nature, will not give much information about this when asked to describe a trauma with open-ended questions. But if he tries to get information from them with closed-ended questions, in this case, as we will soon return, the probability of producing a fake memory increases. Because when a child is asked similar questions over and over again, the child's probability of creating answers that will satisfy the question begins to increase.
But it's not just children who suffer from it; adults can also be affected. Therefore mistreatment, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD or TSSS) abused women and women with PTSD and without PTSD who saw the mistreatment of both men and women in a study that covers both non abused women with PTSD and false memory production (95%), PTSD but non-abused women (78%) and PTSD who has seen abuse and also believe that women (of 79%) and men (86 percent) has been shown to be much higher than that. Also in these women, word memory was weakened, the frequency of adding non-existent words increased.
Forms of Attachment In Adulthood
It is known that our attributes to how we connect to other adults, not just in childhood, but in adulthood, influence the formation of false memories. For example, adults who are avoidant in their relationships are more likely to remember negative emotional experiences in childhood than adults who are fond of others to control their emotions.
Sleeplessness
A study has shown that fake memory production is higher in sleep-deprived individuals than in rested ones when trying to remember lists learned in the past after nights of not sleeping enough. Especially during the formation of the original memory associated with the fake memory, if the person is not sufficiently rested, the probability that the fake moment will occur later in this regard increases.
Fake Memory Syndrome
False memories can regularly affect some people's mood and daily life and reduce their standard of living. Such individuals are thought to have false memory syndrome. In addition to the problem of false memories within the general population, the false memories of these people directly shape their way of life and even their personalities.
However, it has not been academically shown that this is a mental health problem, and therefore it is not yet included in books such as DSM V.
False Questions, False Memories!
One of the easiest ways to place false memories in a person is to ask them closed or directed ("loaded") questions when that person is trying to remember something. Annelies Vredeveldt, memoirist at Vrije University, says:
"I think what people need to understand is how not to access a memory. If you want someone to remember something, for example, something they did a few nights ago, or a moment of crime, you might think it's normal to ask them a lot of questions. But "what color was the man's hair?"ask closed questions like, even worse, "the guy had red hair, didn't he? asking leading questions such as " will often result in erroneous memories/answers."
You can imagine how dangerous this situation is in legal processes. We already know that asking questions based on various unproven assumptions, such as the loaded question fallacy, is a fallacy of logic. But some questions that can be wisely asked during Eyewitness questioning (or determining the suitability of witnesses) can cause the witness's memories to deteriorate or change. This, in turn, can have dangerous consequences for decisions based on eyewitness testimony.
So, this is how the truth should be made? By allowing eyewitnesses to tell their own stories. Without interrupting, without asking questions... If you think they're talking about a point where you're important, we should rather ask encouraging questions than asking specific questions: "Can you elaborate on this?" as...
All this corresponds to the concept of erroneous Association of the source in the production of false memories. As people try to remember a memory, they tend to confuse potential processes that will allow that moment to occur in the first place. For example, an event may have actually happened, it may have been involuntarily placed during a conversation, or it may have been purely fictional. Children, especially in preschool age, have difficulty detecting the difference between real events and fake events. This condition continues throughout adolescence, and children in general are significantly more prone to mixing real events with events that are the product of their own imagination.
How Do Memories Form, How Do They Deteriorate?
We tend to liken memory generation to a camera recording video, but we know that our brains don't record all the details about a memory. What is recorded in our brain in relation to a moment is rather the perceptions and cognitive awareness that we experience in that moment. In other words, we are more inclined to remember our feelings about an event and the essence of the subject; often we cannot remember exactly how that event happened. Chris French says:
"When creating a memory, errors may occur. For the most part, we fill these mistakes in our memories with things that we think should have happened, not things that we really experienced. We can even include erroneous information that we received after the incident in the memory. Unfortunately, when all this happens, we don't even realize that these memories are broken."
Memoir Irony: How Does Trying To Recall A Moment Over And Over Again Spoil It?
The degradation of a memory, that is, its transformation into a false memory, can be experienced by several different mechanisms: at the beginning of them is to think over and over again about an event that we think happened (or actually happened) in the past. As we describe in our article about memoir irony, the more often you try to remember a memory, the less the realism of that moment decreases. Roddy Roediger of the University of Washington says:
"Let's say I came to you as your parent during your tenth birthday party and asked you to remember this party, because this birthday party was unforgettable. So in the following years, you constantly tried to remember this party. When we try to remember our memories of the past, we have the illusion of remembering the first time those memories were formed. So we think we remember us when we were 10. But when we try to remember a memory over and over again, what we do is remember the last time we remember that memory. For this reason, false memories can be involved in these recall efforts every time, and this ultimately results in different family members remembering the same day completely different."
Erroneous Association and fuzzy trace theory
In addition, the concept of giving up learning, used by psychologists who were active in the 1940s-1950s, or the concept that those who came after them call memory fragmentation, is one of them. Although the mechanisms of this are not fully known, we can say that people experience this kind of experience by looking at their behavior: their memories are gradually erased, degraded, and replaced by false memories. Another way is a phenomenon known as erroneous Association. In other words, individuals gain access to a false memory, but are confused about the origins of that memory. But which of them and at what level they are effective is still a matter of debate.
One of the accepted explanations today is called fuzzy trace theory. Charles Brainerd and Valerie F. This theory, developed by Reyna, was originally used to explain an event called the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. This paradigm is that when someone reading a list of interrelated words (such as bed, sleep, tired, Dream, yawning) is asked to count as many words as they can remember from that list, they are more likely to remember words that were never in the list but were related to the subject (such as napping, snoring, and taking a nap) than they are more likely to remember unrelated words. Reyna says:
"Participants can easily produce words that are not on the list, and they are quite sure that these words are also on the list. This is definitely a fake memory. Obviously, this is a very powerful psychological phenomenon. A reality mismatch. So here's "I can't remember."we're not talking about an event we say; it would be to forget. Rather, he said, "I remember very clearly that something happened that didn't actually happen."we're talking about an incident like this. Here is the fuzzy Trail theory, the first theory that managed to explain this."
This theory refers to two types of memory, which can be called literally memory and main idea memory. The first is memory, which allows us to clearly remember an event that happened, in all its details. The second is to remember only the main idea or essence of a past memory. Because this second type is based on memory, the theory is called "fuzzy trace". Reyna describes:
"At an early age, we are more connected to our memory, but as we age, the memory of the main idea begins to become more dominant. Because our lives are based on delayed practice: you study for an exam, but you try to use what you learn not only in the next exam, but also in the questions that will be asked in the next semester, and even in your work in the future. So you don't exist only with what you learned that day or that week; remembering occurs over a long period of time."
Here is the main idea memory is much more effective in this way on the phenomenon of long-term recall. As we get older, our memory and our memory of the main idea become stronger. Therefore, we are more likely to remember the word list in its entirety, but we are also more likely to add words that are not in that list. Therefore, in addition to being able to remember our real memories of our childhood very clearly, we also involuntarily insert a large number of false memories.
Fake Memories Aren't Always Dangerous!
Although false memories may sound like a terrible thing, the advantages they provide under certain situations are very evolutionary: like any curious animal species, man wants to satisfy his curiosity. This often happens through loading meaning into ambiguous concepts. As we grow, so does our search for meaning. Our brains become more inclined to extract meaning from our experiences. But this search for meaning also increases the likelihood of false memories forming. This phenomenon has been repeated and confirmed not only by 1 experiment, but by at least 50 different experiments since it was first proposed.
Basic idea memory also provides advantages in making the right decisions in risky situations. If our brains were only focused on objective, black-and-white realities, we probably would never have been able to develop our sense of curiosity, and we would not be able to quickly create value (for example, find a new source of food). Through the memory of the main idea, we can make choices that are right, at the cost of creating false memories.
The best example of this occurs in the Allais Paradox. Consider that you are offered 4 options:
- Gambling A: there's a 100% chance you'll win $ 1 million.
- Gambling B: you'll win $ 1 million with an 89% chance, $ 5 million with a 10% chance. There's a 1% chance you won't win anything.
Mathematically, gambling B is more advantageous. However, most people prefer option A. Because when you can make "a lot of money" guaranteed, why risk not earning anything? This is the "main idea" of the event, so your main idea memory comes into play. Although it is not mathematically advantageous to choose Option A in risky situations where we need to make quick decisions, it is rationally reasonable.
You can also see this in your daily life: sometimes you are almost sure that you lock your door when you leave your house, but when you go a few steps and get in the car, suddenly this information that you are sure of disappears. Doubt in you leads to a false memory: you didn't lock the door! Thanks to this fake moment, you get out of the car and check the door again. This is an advantageous choice on average, though it may cause some delay.
Be Aware Of Fake Memories!
Paying Attention To Fake Memories Can Save Lives!
Although false memories are evolutionarily advantageous, we also need to be aware that such memories can create problems within the systems we build. For example, a mother named Lyn Balfour acquired a fake memory that one day left her 9-month-old child in a hospice before going to work. Such false memories often occur during routine lives that recur themselves too often: if you leave your child in a hospice every day, you can assume that you also quit that day. Especially if you're tired... In the case of Balfour, unfortunately, the child was still asleep in the back seat of the car.
When the mother enters the workplace, she leaves her child in the car. In a short time, the temperature in the car exceeds 43 degrees, and his child dies due to hyperthermia. Would such a blatant error of our brain constitute a legal offence? Speaking to The Guardian, the mother experienced the power of her fake moment very clearly and very painfully:
"I remember dropping Bryce off at the hospice and even talking to his carer. It's called a fake memory. Every day for years, when you do something the same way, one day you can think that you're doing it when you're not actually doing it."
David Diamond, professor of Molecular Physiology at the University of South Florida, says:
"Our conscious mind sorts memories by importance. But at the cellular level, memory doesn't work that way. If you can forget your mobile phone, you can forget your child."
The bad part is that people who read about such events believe that placing such a "crazy" fake moment can never come on their own. However, studies show that false memories can often occur even in individuals with "exceedingly Superior Autobiographical Memory" (FUOH or HSAM), let alone average people.
Life-Saving Interventions
This is just one example of the danger of false memories. False memories can also cause people to make erroneous choices late in their lives: for example, when 401 participants over 65 were asked what kind of treatment they would like to undergo at the end of their lives (such as CPR or feeding via tube), each made a choice. After 1 Year, 1 in 3 of these participants changed their preferences, but 75% of them incorrectly remembered their original preferences! The error rates in our memories for the preferences of our loved ones are about 86%! This raises problems with medical ethics.
Nutritional Problems
A more interesting problem with false memories arises in our dietary preferences: we can avoid eating foods that we believe have a "bad moment" in our childhood; although we have never had any bad moments with that food! This is likely to lead to significant health problems in the long term. Just because we planted a fake memory!
A Powerful Treatment That Can Be Abused?
Of course, in addition to the problems it will create in legal matters, there are also serious ethical problems in using false memories to ensure that the psychology of individuals is affected in a good or bad way. For example, is it ethical to place false memories on someone with psychological problems during psychotherapy sessions to make them feel better? Usually, when this question is asked in public, there is a higher tendency to think that it is unethical. People who do not find this ethical suggest that such a practice may exceed its purpose, be abused, should not be done without permission, there are practical doubts about the method, there are better alternatives, and may violate free will.
False Memories Of The Political Past
One of the greatest dangers of false memories is the political arena. Because politicians do not hesitate to regularly lie in the name of achieving their goals, and do so using mass media, they can cause a large number of false memories to be created in individual and collective memory.
For example, sociologically painful and traumatic events in the history of countries (massacres, Wars, elections whose Democratic infrastructure is controversial, conflicts, coups, etc.) what happened, what was said, what was experienced, is remembered again and again over long periods of time. We've already said that these have a memory-destroying effect. But just as we have previously said that factors such as insomnia during traumatic events can increase the creation of fake memories later, the information that politicians say and media outlets reflect during such sociologically traumatic events can also affect the possibility of producing fake memories later.
It is possible to see the effects of this already: politicians who tend to lie on a pathological level inculcate extremely obvious lies to their base as if they were ordinary facts. Even if these lies are later refuted, they are perhaps never erased in individual and collective memory, so our perceptions of these leaders can be affected. Especially older individuals suffer from it. Roediger says:
"If an event that a young adult cannot fully remember in the past is told to him by an older adult, it is less likely that this memory will turn into a false memory in a young adult. Because young people think that the older person is not from their group, so their memories can be fake. But when an older person is given information by a younger person that the older person cannot fully remember about the past, they are much more likely to settle in as his false memory. Because older people think that their memory is not very good, younger people think that it is better, and they are easily convinced."
Result
As you can see from all this, there are many details that we still need to learn about our memories and memory, which is one of the most basic building blocks of our existence. We have known for a long time that our brain is not a perfect machine, but being able to accurately diagnose how often, at what level, and under what circumstances this faulty machine is making mistakes can allow us to notice and eliminate potential problems that may arise from them early.
Although false memories are one of the most unusual and impressive phenomena for memory, it is clear that we still have a lot to learn about them as well. But according to what we have learned so far, it can be said that as our individual (and even collective) memory continues to experience new moments forward, it seems inevitable that false memories will continue to accumulate in our storage of memories for the past.