The surprising truth about memory
Why your memories are not what you think they are.
As a therapist, I’ve always had a professional interest in the stories people tell themselves about themselves. Therapy often involves helping people to rewrite the narrative they carry about who they are and I always loved it when clients finally broke free of those stories that were holding them back. Whilst researching for The Wrong Story, I also became fascinated by the part that memories play in the development of those stories.
My own interest in memory began with a head injury at 14 that led to a nasty case of transient global amnesia. I recovered in a just few weeks but was left with some strange lasting problems with memory. Some ‘big’ memories get lost very easily, even though my short term memory is usually pretty good. For example, there are photos of me at what should have been very memorable events - such as the closing ceremony of the commonwealth games and at a 15 year school reunion - that I have absolutely no recollection of attending. Hard to imagine, right? I recall conversations easily but forget places and films I have visited or seen which, to be honest, is pretty useful since I then enjoy them just as much the second time around.
This childhood experience was perhaps always going to mean I would be drawn to articles, books and research about memory. Many years ago I stumbled on the book, Tell me who I am by Alex and Marcus Lewis. The book, their true story, tells of Alex’s total amnesia following an accident and Marcus’s dilemma about how much, if anything, to tell him about their horrifically abusive childhood. This book blew my mind and led to so many questions. If you can’t remember a trauma, how – if at all – does it affect you? But the title of the book alludes to the key question for me; if we have no memories then what does that do to our sense of self, to our identity?
Although Tell me Who I am is mainly a fascinating - if disturbing - story of forgotten abuse, one brother’s desire to protect the other and the other’s desperate search for answers, it was a small aside that stayed with me the most. Marcus and Alex both have quite severe dyslexia but following the accident Alex’s symptoms markedly improved. He still had dyslexia but, having lost the memory of being called “stupid” repeatedly in school, his functioning and ability grew.
This is fascinating and, as a therapist, I wasn’t totally surprised. We know that self-beliefs often become self-fulfilling and this was a dramatic confirmation of that fact. Unencumbered by the belief that he was stupid, relieved of the memories that led to that belief, Alex experienced a significant reduction in his dyslexic symptoms. Wow! That’s just mind-blowing! Imagine if we could selectively get rid of all the memories - and the resultant beliefs - that hold us back.
It was whilst researching for Stephen’s story in The Wrong Story that I stumbled across the work of Elizabeth Loftus and learnt that everyone’s memories are actually more fallible than I ever imagined. Unlike studies into, say Alzheimer’s or how easily we forget things (like names or where we left our car keys etc.) Loftus spent decades studying things people remember, specifically “… when they remember things that didn’t happen or remember thing that were [actually] different from the way they remember them.”
Loftus’s work began with eye witness testimony and she studied how leading questions not only shape the answer, they can also genuinely affect a witness’s memory. When a witness is deliberately or inadvertently fed misinformation it can actually “distort, contaminate or change their memories.” So, ask a witness how fast the cars were going when they ‘smashed’ into each other and you’ll get a higher figure than if you ask how fast they were going when they ‘hit’ each other for example. And crucially the person will remember a faster speed not just say a faster speed.
She says that most of us think of memory like a recording that we can play back at will, but that it’s not like that at all. Memory, she says, is constructed and reconstructed. She likens it to Wikipedia: you can change the content at will. And, scarily, so can others. It is then often impossible to distinguish what was the original content and what has been added later.
Loftus’s remarkable work included demonstrating just how easy it is to plant a completely false memory and have someone believe it. Not just someone vulnerable, not just via dubious techniques such as the use of drugs, but simply by suggestion. Her team managed to plant a memory of being lost in a shopping mall aged about 5 or 6 into a whopping 25% of subjects, just by telling them it happened. These subjects then ‘remembered’ for themselves all sorts of extra detail about that event. They confabulated around an event that never even happened.
Other researchers followed: In Tennessee they succeeded in planting a memory of nearly drowning and being rescued by life guards in about a third of subjects. In Canada they planted a memory of being attacked by a vicious animal in a massive 50% of subjects. After a number of these studies had been completed, the average success rate in planting completely false memories was 31%. If it’s that easy to create a memory of an event that never happened, imagine how easily memories of things that did happen can be distorted or contaminated so that the meaning and impact is completely changed.
It’s important here to point out that false memories are not the same as lies. Apparently it’s quite easy to distinguish between truths and lies when someone’s brain is studied using an fMRI scanner. When someone is recounting a false memory however, the brain looks incredibly similar to that way it looks when someone is recounting a true memory. False memories are experienced exactly like real ones and that’s the scary bit. If we experience them in the same way, there is no way to distinguish between what’s real, what’s distorted reality or even what’s completely false.
Loftus later went on to research whether planting a false memory affected later thoughts and behaviours, proving that it did indeed (she could even change the amount of asparagus someone ate by planting a false positive memory associated with eating asparagus – parents of fussy eaters, take note!). Again, the implications are startling: if our thoughts and behaviours are influenced significantly by our memories and those very memories are so fallible, then what we think and how we behave are actually swayed by fantasy. Add in the impact of things like stress, trauma and alcohol on memory and we have a perfect storm.
So, does it matter? Well yes, because if we refuse to even consider the possibility that our own memories might not be 100% accurate, we may be missing opportunities to see things from a different perspective. As Loftus says, just because you remember something “with confidence, detail and emotion attached doesn’t mean it [actually] happened that way.” Maybe, just by exploring around the edges of a given memory with a therapist or trusted friend, we can unearth extra details, previously forgotten, that can shift the meaning of the memory in helpful ways. If we can challenge our own stories, or even just be open to the possibility that things didn’t quite happen that way, maybe we can reduce the impact of unhelpful memories. This could leave us more open to experiencing the present as it really is rather than through the filter of our pre-existing beliefs. Like Alex Lewis, we might just find relief from any negative symptoms caused by those beliefs.
So, what do you think? Can you even tentatively begin to question whether some of your own memories actually happened the way you think they did? Hard isn’t it!