Think of a time you misremembered something. Did you feel absolutely sure you knew what happened? We tend to be confident in our memory's accuracy — but memory isn't as reliable as we'd like to believe.
| | | Why memories aren't always accurate |  | | | |
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| Think of a time you misremembered something. Did you feel absolutely sure you knew what happened? We tend to be confident in our memory's accuracy — but memory isn't as reliable as we'd like to believe. | | How remembering works | | Scientists are still researching the complex process of remembering, but one essential component is the memory cue. Usually composed of stimuli from the present moment, the cue is like a blueprint: your brain uses it to organize the traces of a memory and build a coherent whole. The quality of the cue can have a major influence on your memory — and can easily lead your brain to make mistakes. | | Confidence doesn't mean accuracy | | Dr. Henry Roediger from Washington University researches how memory cues affect the relationship between confidence and accuracy. | | In a 2014 study, he had participants study a list of words. They then received the same list mixed with new "lures", which were deceptively similar to the original words. The participants had to decide if they'd seen each word, and how confident they were in each decision. | | Participants were often both confident and accurate in identifying old words, but they were also likely to be confident and inaccurate about new lures. These results suggest that the misleading cues tricked them into making false recognitions. | | Misleading cues can have serious consequences — especially in criminal law. When a witness identifies the criminal in a line-up, the suspects (memory cues) usually resemble the convict — and the witness is more likely to choose the wrong person. A 2011 investigation shows that in over 250 exonerated individuals, 76% were wrongly convicted because of a witness's false recollection, even though the witness expressed high confidence in their memory. | | How memory errors may be helpful | | Although memory is flawed, Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter's research suggests that these shortcomings may help us adapt to our environment. He argues that false recognitions, like the lures in Roediger's studies, demonstrate how our brains use stored information to make generalizations, which then help us predict outcomes of present situations. | | So if it feels like your memory plays tricks on you, remember: your brain may be trying to help you navigate through a constantly changing world. | | |
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