Lakshmi Prasad
Mind and Matter

CAN WE TRUST OUR MEMORIES?

I used to believe that if I remembered something clearly, it had to

· 4 min read

Can you recall the seahorse emoji? What if I told you it doesn’t exist? That’s right- there is no official seahorse emoji, and there never has been one. Despite this, there have been many discussions on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram about an emoji that supposedly never existed. Several individuals recall having vivid memories of seeing and even using the emoji. This is an example of the Mandela effect, a phenomenon in which large groups of people share the same false memory of an event, detail or object.

Memory is often thought of as a recording of the past, an exact account of the event that occurred. However, psychologists have discovered that memories are not recorded, but rather reconstructed each time they are recalled. Memories are influenced by various factors in the present and rebuilt.

A memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. The Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model suggests that human memory has three stores:

  1. Sensory memory: Briefly stores sensory information (what you hear, smell, touch and see) for a few milliseconds.
  2. Short term memory: Temporarily stores information that you are actively doing. It can hold up to 3-5 items for a few seconds or minutes. Active recalling can transfer a short term memory to a long term memory
  3. Long term memory: Permanent storage space in the brain that can hold memories for years. While the memories can last a long time, retrieving them becomes harder as time passes.

As mentioned above, memories are reframed based on external factors. Some of these factors are:

  1. Emotions: Emotionally charged memories are remembered more vividly because of the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones activate the amygdala, a part of the forebrain, enhancing attention and perception. Strong sentiments like anger, sadness, stress can distort memories, dominating other positive elements. For example, if someone has an argument at their birthday party, the negative emotions may, over time, overshadow the enjoyable experiences from that day. Conversely, the brain can also suppress or weaken distressing memories as a coping mechanism, helping individuals recover from traumatic experiences.
  2. Self-perception: A person can sometimes unintentionally introduce untrue elements into their recall of a past event, often to fill in missing information or “gaps” in their memory. This is called confabulation. Similar to this is cognitive bias where a person’s desires influence their memories. As a result, they may remember occurrences as they would have liked them to happen rather than what actually occurred. For instance, a student may imagine themselves contributing more in a group project than they actually did. Over time, this imagined version of events may be accepted as reality.
  3. Propaganda and external sources: Repeated exposure to propaganda through social media, news reports, newspapers and other forms of media can make it difficult to distinguish between first hand experiences and second hand information. For example, a person who lived through a significant historical event may later read numerous news articles about it. Over time, details from these reports can become intertwined with their own recollections, blurring the line between personal experiences and information obtained from the media.
  4. Dramatic wording: An experiment conducted by Loftus and Palmer in 1974 studied how the verbs used to describe a car crash affects a person’s memory of an experience. Participants were shown footage of traffic accidents and asked to estimate the speed of the vehicles. Different groups were given questions containing words such as ‘smashed’, ‘collided’, ‘hit’, and ‘contacted.’ The experiment showed that dramatic language used to describe an event can change a person’s perception of an incident.

The most important thing to consider is that memories are kept for survival and identity. As Robert M.G Reinheart said, “Memory isn’t just a passive recording device: our brains decide what matters, and emotional events can reach back in time to stabilize fragile memories”. Memories may not exist solely to remember the past but rather to shape the future. This explains why current emotions and circumstances can alter our memories, making them more relevant to our present needs and experiences. Ultimately, even though we can’t “trust” memories to replay the past, they allow us to carry forward emotions, lessons and experiences that shape the future.

References

Atkinson–Shiffrin_memory_model

Long-term-memory

<https://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html>

False-memory.html

<https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/understanding-the-stress-response>

<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/a-buoyant-life/202407/can-you-trust-your-memories>

mediaattention
← All writing