Can We Trust Our Memories?
Our most dearly held recollections could be pure fiction.
When I was about seven years old, I was playing football by the banks of the Thames with my brother and his friend, Oliver. Our nanny, Judith, and Oliver’s father, Keith, were watching on. It was a bitterly cold October day in London, and the grass was strewn with golden leaves dusted with frost. Perhaps because of the cold, perhaps out of sheer clumsiness, one of us—I think it was my brother—over-kicked the ball, and we watched glumly as it sailed into the river, knowing that would be the end of our game.
Within a flash, Judith had stripped down to her underwear, and a moment later she was diving into the water and swimming over to the ball. This was a plastic ball that had cost about a £1; but Judith was a former champion swimmer who had grown up in Soviet-occupied Hungary, and neither the current nor the bitter cold of the water was going to stop her doing what she, as our nanny, felt duty-bound to do. Some moments later she returned with the ball, climbed out of the river and, not even shivering, came over to us and dropped it at our feet. Rather sheepishly, Keith held out his coat to her (Keith, by the way, was a former bodyguard to two prime ministers). Wordlessly, still showing no signs of being cold, she took it from him.
This is one of my fondest memories. But my brother claims it happened differently. It wasn’t Judith, he claims, but Kay who dived into the river to retrieve the ball, since she was our nanny at the time (we had sixteen caregivers in total, not including relatives, friends’ older sisters and babysitters). He suggests the reason I think it was Judith is because Judith was a swimmer, so that turn of events seems more logical. Yet I remain convinced it was Judith. If I were still in touch with her, I would ask.
He suggests the reason I think it was Judith is because Judith was a swimmer, so that turn of events seems more logical.
It is rather disconcerting to realise that the memories we treasure might not be entirely ours. Our memories are not what we think they are. They do not record events, as a camera does. They are malleable, mutable, remarkably prone to the whims of outside influences. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, perhaps the world expert on memory, has repeatedly shown that we can implant false memories in others simply by discussing past events and adding fictitious details. It is called the ‘lost in the mall’ technique, since Dr. Loftus was able to implant a false memory of being abandoned in a shopping centre as a child in the minds of participants in her study. She did this by mixing stories of real childhood events with this made-up story, narrated by family members. About one-third of the participants later reported remembering the event, even elaborating on it with highly specific—and entirely fabricated—details.
Moreover the setting in which we recall events can change the content of those memories. In a study, later published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, people’s recollections of a story changed based on where they were when they were asked to remember it. The more similar the setting to where the participants were when the event they were asked to recall took place, the better their recall. But change the setting, and new, entirely false details start to appear in their recollection. Context-dependent retrieval—the name of this—is, incidentally, why you will sometimes remember something you have read when you come across information to which it is related elsewhere.
Here is where things get even more strange. Our memories can be a patchwork of the recollections of other people. This phenomenon, called ‘memory conformity’, arises when we recall an event similarly to how another person described it, even if that description was inaccurate. This was illustrated beautifully by researchers at the University of Warwick. Participants in their study were shown a video of a crime taking place, and then asked to discuss what they saw with others. Those others had watched a video that was similar, but different in subtle respects. The participants remembered details not from the video they had watched, but from the discussions they had had.
This phenomenon, called ‘memory conformity’, arises when we recall an event similarly to how another person described it, even if that description was inaccurate.
Emotion has a role to play in what we remember. Memories that we associate with strong emotions tend to be more vivid—but, crucially, not more accurate. Highly emotive memories can be just as unreliable as ones that do not evoke emotion, and perhaps more so, given that we more frequently revisit those emotive memories and revise them a little every time we do. A paper from Harvard University on the emotional enhancement of memory concluded that we are liable to remember the emotional content of the memory but forget its material details, which we then fill in, if you like, with plausible information that helps to explain the strength of emotion we associate with that memory.
The more we remember something, the easier it becomes. And yet, the more we remember something, the more likely we are to add or omit details. Over the course of a life it is wholly possible that dearly held childhood memories might be warped so thoroughly out of shape that we are left only with our fondness for that memory, perhaps its emotional content, but only a handful of accurate details. It as though we are playing a game of what we in the United Kingdom call Chinese whispers; I think the same game in the U.S. is called telephone. Only the difference is that we are remembering, not talking, and we are playing not with other people, but with different versions of ourselves as we change over time.
So what really happened, that October day, by the banks of the River Thames? It is possible that both my brother and I remember it incorrectly. Every time we discuss it, we both strengthen our belief in its truth and yet conspire, if accidentally, to manipulate its details, to warp its content out of shape. And as time marches on, we will perhaps strip that memory so thoroughly that we will be left with a recollection of polished bone, just a skeleton of a memory of Judith diving into the river to fetch that ball—and that, of course, is only if it ever happened at all.
