Has it happened to you that you can’t determine if your recollection of a place, an event is true or is it an image from a dream? I have a couple of such good memories. And although I am inclined to think that it was a dream, it is unlikely that I will ever know whether this is so, so I am inclined to “plunge” into these memories, as into reality.
How often people choose a “different” reality in their memories in order to get away from everyday reality! This is especially true for children.
I remember that we are about eight years old with girlfriends, we are sitting on a bench by the house on a summer evening and sharing events. And then one, more decisive, begins to “cheat”. Her story is gradually filled with unusual details, she inspiresly raises her eyes to the sky, and we sit with our mouths open. But is it possible to restrain the excitement that boils in each of us? Someone will say: “And there was such a skill!” - and now an avalanche of “memories” falls upon each of us. By the time mothers call home, we are already living in a world we made up, and we are so happy - this world filled us and allowed us into a fairy tale, and we truly believe that everything was just that ...
Interestingly, adults also tend to think that “it was just that”, if there are circumstances that “push” to “remember” something that never happened.
“False memories” is a phenomenon of our memory.
The most famous specialist in false memories is Elizabeth Loftus. She acted as an expert on this issue in hundreds of judicial sessions (including the Michael Jackson case) and saved many innocent people from being sentenced.
After many experiments, she proved that the memory is very selective, plastic, which can be rewritten as many times as necessary.
Working for the Department of Transportation, Elizabeth Loftus showed how the “disinformation effect” affects memory.
In one experiment, students were shown recordings of car accidents. After watching each video, students had to fill out an accident report in free form. After which they were asked a number of specific questions about the accident. The main question was about the speed of cars in each accident. Part of the students were asked the question of how fast the cars "crashed" into each other. Another part of the subjects received almost the same question, but instead of the word “crashed” it used the words “touched”, “hit”, “crashed”, “bumped”. It is not surprising that, as a result, when using the word “crashed” in the question, the highest speed was attributed to the machines.
The result of this experiment was the conclusion that the form of the question affects the response of the witness.
In another experiment on the same topic, Loftus received a similar effect. To the question “Have you seen how the headlight crashed?” More false testimonies are given about a broken headlight, while in fact the headlight was not even broken.
False memories can be introduced. Loftus conducted experiments in which subjects even “met” the Bugs Bunny rabbit at Disneyland, although this simply could not be, since the rabbit was a work of Warner Brothers and not Walt Disney's.
However, false memories are not always the result of someone else's malicious intent. Often we ourselves are "glad to be deceived."
For example, we can speculate. Thinking occurs when a person confuses the details of two completely different events and combine them into one memory. For example, having a good evening in the company of friends and when you return to the subway after reading a joke on the Internet, it is quite possible to “remember” what a friend told the joke.
We can also “incorrectly” remember something if our own interpretation of events, based on some kind of life experience, is contrary to what actually happened. In memory theory, this is called fuzzy tracking of thoughts.
The emotions felt during specific events are also capable of influencing, increasing the number of false memories of these events.
Prejudice has a particularly important effect on memories. If there are gaps in a person’s memory regarding certain events, he is inclined to fill them out on the basis of his ideas about how this event should look. For example, if the grandmother on the bench really doesn’t like the neighbor from the top floor, then it is quite possible she will “remember” that she saw him on the day of the crime at “that very place”.
Working with the unconscious by various methods, I dare to say that such false memories are adaptation, self-protection, preservation of psychological comfort by any means. Again, the reasons why this defense does not occur otherwise, also lie in the unconscious.
The unconscious of man and his memory are two inextricably linked things. Changing the way the situation is encoded in the unconscious, you change the memory, and your whole life can begin to turn into rainbow colors, and sometimes this is what a person can really, really need.