The tendency of our memory to make mistakes has long been known, and not only to psychologists, and nevertheless, many of us repeatedly underestimate its ability to fail and deceive.
Well, for example …
1) It is impossible to remember your first years of life, but many are sure that they remember
“I believe that my readers do not remember everything, or they remember very vaguely this highly important period of their existence, which precedes their birth and passes in the womb,” wrote Salvador Dali in his memoirs. "But I - yes, I remember this period as if it were yesterday."
The artist hoped that his own memories of that “divine paradise” would help others to return to those lost moments of life before birth.
In fact, Dali's memories were almost certainly the result of his wild imagination.
Today, scientists believe that it is impossible to remember even the very first years of your life, and the time before birth is completely erased from memory.
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At that time, the brain structures necessary for memorization had not yet developed, which makes it physiologically impossible to preserve personal memories of the earliest childhood.
All "memories" of that time are an illusion or "false memories" collected from the life experience of others, stories of relatives and friends, or knowledge that we received later.
Old photographs can give the impression that you truly remember the earliest years of your life.
2) Your memory depends on your temperature
Psychologists say that human memory depends on context. To understand what this means, consider an experiment in which participants are asked to dip their hands in a bucket of ice water (which is not very pleasant), and then they are asked to memorize a list of words.
After a series of tests, the scientists found that participants' memory improved when they plunged their hands into ice water again.
This study showed that we remember facts better if we recreate the environment (context) and conditions (physical or psychological) of the moment in which the desired memories were formed - even if this seems completely irrelevant to us.
By the way, this is one of the reasons that we better remember the events of the last party after we drink beer, and when we are absolutely sober, this is difficult to do.
And this can be used: for example, if you chewed gum or drank coffee while memorizing something, your memory will return to you if you reproduce that process.
Smells help too: try the same perfume or, if you're a man, the same aftershave that you used in the situation you want to remember.
The physical condition of the body, including its temperature, can affect how and how we remember.
3) your mind bends time
Test yourself: try to remember in which month and year the following events occurred:
(a) Michael Jackson died
(b) Beyonce released the album Lemonade
(c) There was a famous confusion at the Oscars when La La Land was mistakenly presented with the award for Best Motion Picture
(d) Angela Merkel announced her decision to step down as chancellor in 2021
Unless you are one of those amazing people who keep all the news in your memory, your answers will be far from real dates. And in this you can see a certain pattern.
Research has shown that we often underestimate the amount of time that has elapsed since the events of the more distant past (for example, the death of Michael Jackson) and exaggerate the amount that has passed since the recent events (the decision of Angela Merkel).
This phenomenon is known as "time displacement" or "telescoping": your mind warps time and stores events in memory so that they do not follow the actual chronology.
(Correct answers: (a) June 2009 (b) April 2016 (c) February 2017 (d) October 2018)
Some events in the history of - for example, the death of Michael Jackson - so easily remembered that our minds downplay the amount of time that has passed since them.
4) Vague memories are even good …
Try drawing a portrait of your best friend from memory. Or, without looking at the photo, describe his (or her) appearance in as much detail as possible.
Unless you have a particularly poor memory for faces, you can do it pretty well in terms of the main features.
But some specific traits (even such as the exact hair color) can be difficult to remember.
This is just one example of the fact that we tend to remember the essence of things, and not their detailed description. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The details of facial features may change over time, but the overall impression of a person's appearance (the essence of his appearance) remains the same. This means that you will recognize your friend in any light, with any hairstyle.
(Interestingly, even our memories of our own appearance are not always accurate. We tend to remember our face as more attractive than it really is.)
Our facial memory may not be very detailed - and that's not always a bad thing.
5) … however, your overconfidence in the accuracy of your memory can cost you dearly
Let's say you need to draw or describe your own face. You probably think you remember him perfectly. And, most likely, you are wrong.
Many studies have shown that most people think their memory is much better than the average person. Which, of course, is statistically impossible.
We ignore and then just forget those cases when our memory let us down, but we remember those perfectly well, it worked perfectly. Because of this, it seems to us that when we need it, our memory (our wonderful memory!) Will not let us down.
And this turns into a serious problem if, for example, a policeman is confident in his memory, on whom it depends how the investigation of a criminal case will proceed.
It is also a problem for those students who are overly optimistic about their learning before an important exam.
We are often overconfident about our "prospective memory" - the ability to remember what needs to be done in the future. And this can already have serious financial consequences.
This is often used by those who offer a free subscription period for something, which at some point ends, and you are automatically charged if you forget to cancel your subscription due to excessive confidence in your prospective memory.
During criminal investigations, overconfidence in one's memory can have serious consequences.
6) you may have digital amnesia
The ubiquity of smartphones is having a major impact on what and how we remember.
Just imagine how many events your Facebook or Instagram account stores. This is a whole archive that will help you remember everything that happened in your life.
But social media can also distort your memories. One of the reasons for this is a phenomenon known as "retrieval-induced forgetting" (RIF - a phenomenon of memory, when memories of one become the cause of forgetting another. - Translator's note).
It is now well known that memories become labile, unstable, and fragile when we drag them into consciousness - and the accompanying memories are also distorted.
As a result, the recollection of one element of an event can refresh this detail in our memory, but it will lead to the fact that other information about the same event will be firmly forgotten.
This is easy to see in the example of social media. "Facebook" from time to time brings you back to the events of the past that you once mentioned in your post - some kind of photograph, some kind of recorded emotion, thought …
But by doing so, something else that happened that day, other aspects of the event, is forgotten even more.
Given that our social media feeds and feeds are already not very realistic about us, this becomes a problem.
“Social media dictates to us what events are most important in our lives, thereby killing the memories of what is not considered worthy of putting on the page, what does not need to be“shared,”writes Julia Shaw, a psychologist at University College London and author of the book "The Memory Illusion." At the same time, it reinforces the memories that other users collectively consider most worthy of their likes, thus giving some memories more meaning than they deserve, "she emphasizes.