Why are Our Memories Unreliable?

https://www.humantruth.info/why_are_memories_unreliable.html

By Vexen Crabtree 2016

#memories #perception #subjectivism #thinking_errors

Our memories change over time and frequently they are simply wrong₁_,₂. But most of us tend to think of memories as accurate accounts₂. Extensive studies have shown that our memories of events are active interpretations of the past rather than picture-perfect records of it₃_,₄. The best way to avoid errors is to write things down as early as possible₂. Our recall of the past is affected by our present expectations and by our current knowledge and state of mind₅. We tend to suppress and alter memories that damage our self-esteem₂_,₆. Psychologists such as Elizabeth Loftus have shown through repeated experiments that simply by asking people questions about what they think they saw or heard previously, you make their subconscious whir into a creative drive in order to answer the question, even if it means making up details, and allowing assumptions and feelings to silently trick our minds into inventing elements of memories. Therapists indulging the 1990s-2000s panic surrounding retrograde amnesia and retrieved memories of traumatic events turned out to be producing an entire generation of fabricated and imaginary memories₇_,₈.

Memories that are full of details give us a great sense of confidence, but, such memories are just as likely to contain accidental fabrications, many errors, and a great number of "filled-in" details which we simply subconsciously invented. The more extreme the claims are, the more and more necessary it is to find proof that supports or discredits memory - the final arbiter of human memory must remain to be corroborating external evidence.

1. Our False Confidence in our Own Memories

#justice

Scientific studies since the 1930s have consistently affirmed that "what we think we've seen frequently replaces what we've actually seen"₃. Elizabeth Loftus showed in experiments that when they were asked what colour a barn was in a photo, many witnesses will report that it was red, even when there was no barn in the photo at all. This strangeness occurs because our brain effortlessly makes up evidence to fill gaps in knowledge. Witnesses of violent crime, which you might assume would have such a visual impact as to be unforgettable, manage to completely make up on average of 1.25 'facts' per crime, all of a kind more serious than simply getting some descriptive elements wrong such as physique or clothing of a gunman.

Studies by Elizabeth Loftus on leading questions has shown that our recollection of even quite recent events is skewed by the way we think about them or are asked about them; such studies have become prodigal for police interview methods and in particular for cases of child abuse where forceful questions can 'lead' a child into 'recalling' events in the way that the adult is implying they occurred. We have all experienced the guilty feeling that, after arguing with a friend, we have perhaps reconstructed past events into how we wanted them to have occurred, rather than how our friend saw them.

There is one particular problem with the precarious nature of memory: they nearly always feel very accurate, and we rarely doubt the details that we are sure we witnessed.

“Most of us are deceived into thinking that the more vivid and detailed our memories are, the more accurate they are. The scientific evidence does not support our intuition here. [...] This illusion of confidence not only leads us to put more faith in our own memories than we should, it also leads us to put more faith in the testimony of others when they express certainty and appear self-assured.”
"Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!" by Robert Todd Carroll (2011)₉

Carroll, like Loftus, highlights the particular problems that this causes for police who are pursuing eyewitness testimonies₁₀.

“There have been many studies by social scientists that have found that eyewitness testimony is highly inaccurate but is considered highly trustworthy. Most people are not very good at identifying a stranger whom they saw briefly on a single occasion under stressful conditions, especially if the stranger is of a different race than the witness. As with memory studies, eyewitness studies have not found that the confidence of eyewitnesses is any indication of the accuracy of their testimony.”
"Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!" by Robert Todd Carroll (2011)₁₀

2. Hindsight Bias: Our Memories are Active Reconstructions₁₁

#memories #perception

Extensive studies have shown that our memories of events are active interpretations of the past rather than picture-perfect records of it₃_,₄. Our recall of the past is affected by our present expectations and by our current knowledge and state of mind₅.

“Most of us are also affected by hindsight bias: we construct our memories to fit with what we believe or know in the present. Many studies have shown that how people had judged something in the past changes in light of new information or later experience and they deceive themselves into thinking that their original judgment was in tune with the new information even though it wasn't. Memory might well be described as the incessant construction of the past and be seen as just one aspect of our tendency to confabulate.”
"Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!" by Robert Todd Carroll (2011)₁₂

“Bartlett concluded that interpretation plays a large and largely unrecognized role in the remembering of stories and past events. [...] Rather than human memory being computer-like, with the output matching the input, Bartlett and Hunter believe that we process information in an active attempt to understand it. Memory is an 'imaginative reconstruction' of experience (Bartlett, 1932)."”
"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross (1996)₄

Guy Harrison, writing on the trustworthiness of eyewitnesses of miracles, tells the same story:

“Witnesses are notoriously unreliable in courtrooms. Memory is now understood to be more like a mental retelling of an event, rather than an accurate snapshot. Everyone is vulnerable to misinterpreting sensory input and even to experiencing hallucinations.”
"50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God" by Guy Harrison (2008)₁₃

Nietzsche also pointed out that our memories are subject to our mental states, and our regrets. He wrote in 1886 that when our memory says "I did that!" but our pride says "I could not have done that", eventually it is our memory that surrenders₁₄. And equally playfully, he also phrased it this way:

“Blessed are the forgetful: for they 'get the better' even of their blunders.”
"Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)₁₅

3. The Failure of Hypnosis and Therapy-Led Memory Retrieval

#memories #psychology

Some special techniques for helping people to retrieve memories, such as hypnosis, have proven to be hopelessly prone to mistakes, errors, suggestion and subconscious inventions. The industry is given far too much credence in the popular imagination₇.

“Interrogators have been tempted to use hypnosis to help people remember, but the evidence is overwhelming that hypnosis leads people to remember things that never happened. People are often very confident in their erroneous hypnotic memories, probably because they are so vivid and easy to come by under hypnosis. The evidence, however, does not support the notion that the more confident one is in the accuracy of one's memory the more accurate the memory is likely to be. People are as confident of their false and inaccurate memories as they are of their accurate ones.”
"Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!"
Robert Todd Carroll (2011)₁₆

Retrograde Amnesia: The attempt to 'retrieve' or 'unlock' memories through hypnosis or other therapist-led methods comes from a popular theory that traumatic events can become "suppressed" and are no longer accessible to a victim of a traumatic event without the help of a therapist. Sometimes the recovered memories are very detailed, extensive, and can include flashbacks and new dreams about the events₈_,₇.

“All of this would come as a 'bolt from the blue' for the parents and other family members. [...] Typically, there would not be one shred of evidence that any abuse had occurred and sometimes supposed events could not, in any case, have happened because they were contradicted by known historical facts; or they were so extensive and bizarre, involving, for example, neighbours, other children including siblings, and animals, as well as Satanic worship - as to defy any possibility of their going undetected at the time and remaining so for years afterwards. Yet, the accused parents had no opportunity to defend themselves; indeed some were prosecuted in the criminal courts purely on the evidence of the therapy.”

Skeptical Intelligencer (2007)
Article by Michael Heap₇

Memories Behaving Strangely: A warning sign is memories that become clearer over time, with increasing details₇, which is unlike the true progression of memory. Even if the memory is based in some, truth, retrieved details are suspect. Tests have shown that some people are willing (or 'susceptible') to go along with memory-manipulation schemes, even though investigators know all along that they have fabricated the content₇.

There is (or, was) an industry of legal-psycho-therapy cases linked squarely to court-cases, which has led to a large number of cases that have been examined in detail. In general, cases have been found to be demonstratably untrue where evidence was available. In cases where there is no external evidence, it is sadly true that some convictions have been made squarely as a result of recovered-memories accusations.₇

A Poor Comparison to Known Traumatic Events: Large numbers of survivors of events such as the holocaust, of wars, and of many other historical events, who have experienced trauma as part of a well-documented historical episodes do not, in general, also suffer from retrograde amnesia₇ in any way similar to those who came out of the repressed-memories-panic of the 1980s-2000s. You would think that of so many unfortunate persons, some would develop such symptoms. The evidence is of the opposite situation: Those with traumatic memory aberrations are normally unable to stop thinking about horrific events, and endured traumatic events do not, in reality, generate persons with 'suppressed memories' that need retrieval by a therapist.

The sad truth is that, despite everyone involved genuinely trying to help, active attempts to recover 'lost memories' are accidentally creating fake memories. A parallel can be seen with the 'leading question' that is warned against by interrogation mentors: ask a question in a certain way, and you start getting the answers you want, and can permanently confuse the truth.

Initial Doubts: Despite early skepticism from police investigators and psychologists, there are some people, and some events, and some personality types, that do seem linked with an increased susceptibility to forget traumatic life events₈, and, there is an argument that personal childhood events are more likely to be repressed or psychologically forgotten than any well-documented culturally-acknowledged mass-events₈. And so, research into repressed memories retrieved via therapy began.

By 1995, there was already plenty of literature showing that memories could be distorted by misinformation, by stereotypes, "and so on"₈. Unlike those older studies, the new wave of recovered-memory reports were not (yet) being supported (or undermined) by studies. Some kinds of repressed memory were easily concluded as false; largely the more outlandish claims of impossible events, UFO abductions and Satanic-panic-era ritual abuse conspiracies. But it was more difficult to judge on the more plausible claims.₈.

Psychological investigations were limited due to ethical constraints, but the research that was done quickly showed that it was easier than expected to implant false memories.

“... making somebody think that they were attacked by a dog as a child.... may be about as traumatic an event as can be added. [...] Several laboratories began showing that with a little encouragement (like asking people to imagine the event, showing photograph of the event, repeated questioning, hypnosis, etc) it was possible for participants to come to report relatively unusual events [including] events occurring in the first few days of life, medical procedures, and [animal attacks], and that this even occurs with trained interviewers. The ease with which participants can be led to make such reports relates to aspects of both the event and the person's belief about the plausibility of the event.”

Dr Wright, Dr Ost & Prof. French (<2007)₈

"Events where some amnesia is reported should be treated with caution"₈. Because of the role of expectation and belief, it seems very likely that memories are most easily implanted in those who believe that it is possible to have repressed memories. And hence why, from the 1980s to 2010s, the wave of recovered-memories became epidemic. As the evidence mounted about the need to be careful, the wave subsided.

4. Thinking Errors

#beliefs #pseudoscience #psychology #thinking_errors

We all suffer from systematic thinking errors₁₇_,₁₈ which fall into three main types: (1) internal cognitive errors; (2) errors of emotion₁₉, perception and memory; and (3) social errors that result from the way we communicate ideas and the effects of traditions and dogmas. Some of the most common errors are the misperception of random events as evidence that backs up our beliefs, the habitual overlooking of contradictory data, our expectations and current beliefs actively changing our memories and our perceptions and using assumptions to fill-in unknown information. These occur naturally and subconsciously even when we are trying to be truthful and honest. Many of these errors arise because our brains are highly efficient (rather than accurate) and we are applying evolutionarily developed cognitive rules of thumb to the complexities of life₂₀_,₂₁. We will fly into defensive and heated arguments at the mere suggestion that our memory is faulty, and yet memory is infamously unreliable and prone to subconscious inventions. They say "few things are more dangerous to critical thinking than to take perception and memory at face value"₂₂.

We were never meant to be the cool, rational and logical computers that we pretend to be. Unfortunately, and we find it hard to admit this to ourselves, many of our beliefs are held because they're comforting or simple₂₃. In an overwhelming world, simplicity lets us get a grip. Human thinking errors can lead individuals, or whole communities, to come to explain types of events and experiences in fantastical ways. Before we can guard comprehensively against such cumulative errors, we need to learn the ways in which our brains can misguide us - lack of knowledge of these sources of confusion lead many astray₂₄.

Learning to think skeptically and carefully and to recognize that our very experiences and perceptions can be coloured by societal and subconscious factors should help us to maintain impartiality. Beliefs should not be taken lightly, and evidence should be cross-checked. This especially applies to "common-sense" facts that we learn from others by word of mouth and to traditional knowledge. Above all, however, our most important tool is knowing what types of cognitive errors we, as a species, are prone to making.

For more, see:

"Errors in Thinking: Cognitive Errors, Wishful Thinking and Sacred Truths" by Vexen Crabtree (2022).

5. Subjectivism and Phenomenology: Is Objective Truth Obtainable?

#epistemology #perception #philosophy #solipsism #subjectivism

Subjectivism is a problem of epistemology (theory of knowledge). The word describes the fact that we can only understand the world through our own senses and our own rational deliberations, in conjunction with our own limited experience in life. Our brains are imperfect organic machines, not a mystical repository of truth. Our senses are imperfect, our point of view limited, and the reality we experience is never the total picture. Our divergent contexts result in each of us interpreting, understanding and perceiving the world differently to one another even when looking at the same stimulus. Human thought is infused with systematic thinking errors. Our knowledge of absolute reality is hampered by our limited insights and imperfect brains, and we can never truly escape from the shackles of our own minds. Our total take on reality is a mix of guesses and patchwork. These problems have been debated by the most ancient philosophers, thousands of years ago, and no practical answers have yet been forthcoming.₂₅.