Is our memory as reliable as we thought?

Although it's hard to believe, our memory is not as reliable as we think.

Is memory of people trusting?

Our memory is extremely susceptible to suggestions. It's something that can create memories of things that don't really happen to us.

Usually we encounter memory deviations of common things, for example, in memory, you bring your keys into the house and hang in the kitchen, when in fact you leave in the car.

Artwork (Source: internet)

"Memory deviation" can cause serious consequences. The researchers found that " memory deviation " can lead to false convictions, often due to misidentification of suspicious subjects or incorrectly remembering details when questioned.

The following is a typical example of this case.

A man named Steve Titus, 31, lives in Seattle, Washington state. He is a restaurant manager and is engaged to Gretchen. On one night when both of them are going to the restaurant, Steve's car is caught by the police and pulled over because his car is similar to the perpetrator's car who raped a previous caravan girl and because Steve quite similar to the killer. Then the police took a picture of him and showed the girl, she said ' This person is the most'.

Then Steve Titus was prosecuted. During the trial Steve Titus was convicted of rape after the victim stepped onto the podium and said, "I'm absolutely sure this is the man." The trial ended, Steve was taken to jail.

During his detention, he phoned a local magazine and asked for help. His call for help attracted the attention of an investigative journalist. This person finally found the culprit. And this guy finally confessed with 50 other rapes. After this information is provided to the court, Steve Titus is acquitted.

According to Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher on memory, the cause of this case is due to memory deviations.

What does "memory deviation" mean?

"Memory deviation" is the embroidery and distorting of memories and the creation of events that don't really happen . People often think of "memory" as a video camera that keeps everything accurate and true. In fact, memories are often wrong. One can be completely confident that their memories are accurate, but there is no guarantee that a certain memory of them is correct.

In her study, Elizabeth proved, suggestions can cause memory deviations. And she also showed that these memories were woven and became more and more vivid. Over time, memories gradually became distorted and began to change. In some cases, the original memory may be changed to incorporate a new information or experience.

Artwork (Source: Internet)

Elizabeth's following study shows how easily memories can be woven. In this experiment , the participating volunteers will watch a video of a car accident and then be asked what they saw in the video.

Some volunteers asked, 'How fast is the car when the collision (smash) gets into one another?', Others were asked the same question but the word ' smash ' was replaced by the word 'hit' . A week later, the people who asked the question with the word ' smash' said that they saw the broken glass in the video while no glass broke.

In another experiment, we showed volunteers a video of a car that had a traffic accident when crossing an intersection with a sign. When we asked volunteers with suggestions for a priority road sign, the answer we received was that they found the priority road signs at the intersection rather than stop signs.

Elizabeth also showed that false memories formed when the time was long enough for the memory to really fade. In the above experiments, the time between the incident and the interview plays a role in creating false memories in the volunteers. If the volunteers were asked immediately after watching the video, they might be less affected by the false information.

Although it's hard to believe, our memory is generally not as reliable as we thought.Memory deviations can occur for those with good memory.