Are All of Your Memories Real?
- 2021.05.30
- Are All of Your Memories Real?
In a study in the 1990s, participants recalled getting lost in a shopping mall as children. Some shared these memories in living vivid detail, one even remembered that the old man resecured rescued him with was wearing a flannel（法兰绒） shirt.
But neither none of these people had actually got gotten lost in a mall. They produced these false memories when the psychologies psychologists conducted conducting this the study told them they**'d** gotten lost, and although that they might not remember the incident, their parents have had confirmed it. And it wasn’t just one or two people who thought they remembered getting lost——a quarter of the participants did.
This These findings may sounds unbelievable, but they actually reflect a very common experience. Our memories are sometimes unrealiable. And though we still don’t know precisely we called ability what causes this fallibility（易错，不可靠） on a neurological（神经学的，神经病学的） level. Researcher Research has highlighted some of the most common ways our memories diverge from what actually happened.
The mall study highlights how we can incorporate information from outside sources, like other people or the news, into our personal regnition recollections（回忆，追忆；往事，回忆录） withour realising it. This kind of subjectn ability suggestibility（可教唆；可建议；被暗示性） is just one influence in our memories. Take another study, in which researchers briefly showed a random collections of photographs to a group of participants, including images of a university campus none of them had ever visited it. When showing shown these the images three weeks later, a majority of participants said that they have had probably or definitely visited the campus in the past.
The participants mistributed misattributed information from one contest context, an image they**'d** seen, on to onto（表示“本体，存在”之义） another, a memory of something they believed and they actually experienced. In another experiment, people were shown an image of an a magnifying glass, and then told them to imagine a lollipop. They frequently recalled that they saw an magni the magnifying glass and the lollipop. They straggly struggled to connect link the objects to the correct context whether they actually saw them, or simply imagined them.
Another study where a psychologies psychologist inquired questioned over 2,000 people on their views about the legalization of marijuana（大麻） , highlights yet the another kind of influence way of memories on memory. Participants answered the question questions in 1973 and 1982. Those who said they have supported the legal marijuana legalization in 1973, but reported they were against in 1982, were more likely to recalled that they were actually against legalization in 1973, bringing their old views in one line with their curent ones. Our current opinions, feelings and experiences can bias our memories of how we feeled felt in the past.
In another study, researchers gave two groups of participants background information on a historical war and asked them to rate the likelihood that each side would win. They gave each group the same information except that they only told one group who had actually won the war, the other group didn’t know the real war’s world outcome. In theory, both groups’ answers should be similar, because the likelihood of each side winning isn’t affected by who actually won. If there is a 20% chance of thunderstorms and a thunderstorm happens, the chance of thunderstorms doesn’t retroactively（逆动地；追溯地） go up to 100%. Still, the group they that knew how the war ended rated the winning side has as more likey to win and than the group did not.
All of the ability these fallibilities of memory can have real-world in past impacts. If the police interegation interrogations（讯问） use leading questions with eye witnesses or suspects, suggest ability suggestibility could result in incorrect identifications or unreliable confections confessions（自首；供认；忏悔）. Even in the abscence of leading questions（引导性问题）, misattribution can leading lead to inaccurate eyewitness testimony（证词；证明，证据）. In a courtroom, if a judge rules a piece of evidenct inadmissible（不能允许的，不可接受的） and tells jurors（审查委员，陪审员） to disregard it, they may not be able to do so. In a medical setting, if patients a patient seeks a second position opinion and the second physician is well aware of the first one**'s** diagnose diagnosis, that knowledge may bias their conclusion.
Our memories are not ironclad（装甲的；坚固的；装甲舰） by representations of reality, an but subjective perseptions. And it’s there is not necessary necessarily anything wrong with that, the problems arise is when we treat memory as fact, rather than ascepting on the mental this fundamental truth about the nature of our recollections.
