Most of us berate ourselves endlessly for having a poor memory, but recent research seems to support the idea that memories are not the fixed, immovable pieces of mental real estate that they were once widely thought to be. In fact, it seems that we use our memory muscles quite selectively, remembering some things quite accurately, and embroidering others to suit ourselves.
He remembered the Moon landing … the year before it happened!
Remembering the Moon landing … or, er … something like that!
A middle-aged lawyer always fondly recalled how his father had consoled and comforted him while his mother was in hospital giving birth to a younger brother. He distinctly remembered his dad distracting him by telling him all about the amazing news in the headlines at the time, that man had just landed on the Moon.
It was only decades later that he realised it was all a fiction, since his brother was actually born in 1968, a full year before the Moon landing took place!
Dr. Martin Conway, head of the psychology department at City University London, says his memory was perfectly correct in one sense – that his father loved him and cared for him – even though the Moon landing ‘memory’ was clearly just cobbled together from various bits of memories and information that were slotted neatly together to fill a gap.
“It’s not so important that a memory be accurate,” Dr. Conway says, “it’s more important that it helps us define ourselves”. But I think we’ve all had life experiences that support this idea. I know I’ve ‘remembered’ certain things that I know couldn’t have happened exactly as I thought I’d recalled them. But on reflection, I could see how useful it must’ve been to form such a memory.
Memory is a blend of fact and fiction
More and more researchers are coming to the conclusion that memory is not the video tape-like mechanism that it’s long been assumed to be, and is in fact more a blend of fact and fiction, created in ways that are useful and creative, and tend to support our own beliefs about ourselves.
It’s apparent now that memory is more malleable and changeable than it was once thought to be. In fact, that’s been shown in court cases, where testimony that has been honestly and truthfully given has been shown to be patently false. And in several cases, these false memories have been deliberately planted by psychologists to test out just how reliable memories are … or are not.
Here’s a few of the ways memories can become distorted:
- We become confused about two or three separate events, and combine parts of each to create a hybrid memory of an event that we believe to be true.
- We exaggerate certain parts of the memory for the sake of ‘telling a good story’, e.g. when a man recalls how he had a fight with three or four assailants and describes in detail how he beat them all. It’s often nearer the truth that he’s talking primarily about a fight with one man, but adding remembered bits of other situations, involving other men, and sometimes not even men he ever fought with, but men involved in fights he only witnessed.
- We sometimes subtly change a memory to include recent information (a bit like the lawyer who ‘remembered’ hearing his dad tell him about the Moon landing).
- We remember various things from an extended period of time, but concatenate them to form a single event – one that never actually happened.
- We sometimes remember ‘the good old days’, fondly recalling memories that emphasise the positive aspects of certain situations, while ignoring or softening the negative aspects. These types of memories are common in people who’ve been through really hard times, such as surviving on rations during World War II, and making do with only the very basics for everyday life.
To listen to some people talk about those times you’d think they were actually recalling an adventure holiday! It’s pretty clear that they’ve conveniently forgotten how miserable and restrictive those times were, but it’s also understandable that it makes perfect sense to downplay those negative aspects.
- On the other hand, we sometimes exaggerate the darkness of a remembered situation, or the dangers involved, in such as way as to make us feel, and look to others, braver and possessing of more forbearance.
- And we sometimes remember ourselves acting in a much more honourable way in certain situations, when the truth is less flattering. And who can say that’s not understandable?
In fact, the more you think about it, or look into it, the less trustworthy our memories prove to be. But that’s not always a bad thing, of course. It’s a great help to be able to recall how strong we’ve been in the past, or how honest, or how generous, or how faithful, if it helps us become more the kind of person we’d like to see ourselves as.
Muhammad Ali used to enjoy reliving his ‘future history’
Reminds me of something I read years ago about Muhammad Ali, about how he used to fantasise about his ‘future history’, as he called it, the fights he had already had in his mind, and from which he’d emerged victorious. These things weren’t just not clearly and accurately remembered, they hadn’t even happened yet! But they served a very useful purpose – bolstering his self-belief to the extent that when the day of the fight actually arrived, he was in a perfect frame of mind, having already experienced the fight and beaten his opponent many times over in his ‘memories’.
We would all do well to learn from Ali’s ‘future history’ habit; it would be greatly beneficial to each one of us to cultivate a habit of mentally previewing future successes in advance in order to create a more success-oriented attitude. It certainly seems to have worked amazingly well for the man who became possibly the most famous and successful sports personality ever. And if that’s not a recommendation for a proposed new habit, I don’t know what is.
In fact, it falls directly in line with what Dr. Maxwell Maltz teaches in Psycho Cybernetics, to go into the theatre of the mind regularly and experience winning situations in as elaborate a way as possible, conjuring up the various feelings and emotions that will ultimately derive from a successful outcome.
Memories tend to stick more firmly in the mind at times of great stress, or great achievement. A person who surprises himself, and those around him, by winning in a certain situation, or becoming a champion, will remember the details of that event for life. Conversely, someone else who expected to do well and didn’t quite make the grade might well be stuck with those distasteful memories equally strongly and for just as long, but for a different reason. The common factor in both situations is the heightened sense of emotional involvement.
To fix a memory firmly, be creative!
This points out just how important it is to create an emotional aspect when we’re trying to form long-lasting memories. It’s all very well to repeat the details of the subject matter we want to remember, and to go over them again and again, but to really cement the memory in place it would be well to add an emotional aspect. And true to memory’s plasticity, we shouldn’t be too strict about how precise or ‘true’ the memory is that we’re forming.
In other words, if we can see it in our minds, and make the images fantastical, and colourful, and humorous, and sexy, and violent, and filled with frenetic activity, then those memories are much more likely to gel and remain in place for much longer. Just as we can’t get the images out of our minds when we’ve witnessed a particularly gory accident. And to help the process become even more successful, we can revisit the memory again and again, just like Muhammad Ali used to do, each time enjoying and revelling in the emotional payoff, even if the ‘facts’ of the memory are completely fictionalised.
Put your memory on a healthy diet!
So, should we abandon our ideas of having a poor memory? You bet! We’ve got an incredible memory, just as long as we recognise that it’s a hungry beast and needs to be fed the right memory food, and plenty of it. And that ‘food’ should consist of lots of nourishing action, and plenty of healthy greens (well, all colours actually, as long as they’re bright and vivid), together with a certain amount of processed food (the totally manufactured ‘lumps’ of memory that we ourselves create).
As long as give our memory plenty of exercise and provide a healthy memory diet, there’s no reason our memory can’t soon be of Olympian quality, and providing us with memory victory after memory victory.
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