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Memory Biases and Pitfalls · Acedra
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Memory Biases and Pitfalls
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0:00
In this lecture presentation, we'll begin exploring some of the memory biases and pitfalls that affect how we see ourselves and how we approach the world. Including our relationships, our perception of risk, our decision-making, and many other factors that we'll explore throughout the rest of the course as well.
0:21
As always, I recommend having your slides in front of you so that you can fill in the blanks as we move through the lecture presentation.
0:30
Let's start by looking at an overview of the flaws of memory.
0:35
The flaws in memory result from a variety of contributing factors.
0:41
One of these factors is how accurately the information was encoded in the first place.
0:48
Encoding depends on what we pay attention to, and how we interpret and experience those events.
0:57
Attention is selective. We can't attend to everything at the same time, there's simply too much going on to be able to take it all in equally. We'll talk more about selective attention on the next slide. Next, memories are inherently subjective and biased.
1:18
They're influenced not only by what we pay attention to, but also how we see the world.
1:24
Encoding depends on how the event was interpreted. So for example, if you got into an argument with a friend, what you'll remember is your interpretation or your perception of what happened, not the actual transcript of the discussion.
1:41
That leaves you vulnerable to having more confidence than maybe you should have, about how that conversation actually occurred. It's very common for two people to both remember it differently, and to then argue about who remembers it accurately.
1:58
In general, it might be that neither of you do, or that the truth is somewhere in between.
2:05
Memories are processed according to information we hold about the world.
2:10
This is a big part about how stereotypes are formed and maintained.
2:16
You'll notice in your materials this week there is a test called the Implicit Association Test.
2:23
I hope this helps you uncover some of your biases that are likely affecting your memories and more.
2:31
Memories are also strongly influenced by unconscious factors. Remember those research studies we talked about? Like the hot and iced coffee study, and the heavy and light clipboard study?
2:44
Those individuals will remember those applicants as they perceived them, not as they were.
2:51
So the person who handed over the iced coffee, who might have been perceived as cold and rigid, could have been a very warm and flexible person, but they won't be remembered as such.
3:07
Another example might be, imagine you're at a restaurant and you're really really hungry. You're not in a great mood, and you're just sitting there counting the seconds until your food comes to the table.
3:20
The food is delayed by about five minutes longer than you expected.
3:25
You're likely to recall the poor service of that restaurant, and perhaps it's enough that you don't want to go back. Now, let's say you're at the same restaurant and your meal is also delayed by five minutes but you're enjoying a glass of wine with your friends. You're having a nice conversation and you almost don't even notice the time pass.
3:44
In this case, you might remember the exact same experience in terms of the quality of the service, but you'll remember it as having good service because you had a nice time and you weren't really paying attention to the five-minute delay.
4:00
Another example of unconscious factors relates to priming and implicit memories.
4:06
As you might remember, priming can lead to this sense of familiarity.
4:11
We like something more, but we often don't know why.
4:16
Familiarity is basically that stimuli that resides in our memory, that we might have no conscious knowledge of. It will still feel familiar, even though we don't know
4:27
why. Memories feel different than new information, and we use these feelings to make judgments.
4:35
Interestingly, even inaccurate information influences our future thoughts and beliefs. And that's true even if you knew or found out that that information was inaccurate.
4:48
Repeatedly remembering something can also have the same effect.
4:53
Let's use the example of rumors. Let's say you hear a negative rumor about someone you don't know well,
5:00
and then later you find out, actually that rumor was entirely false.
5:06
But, you're around that person and they do something reminiscent of what the rumor was about. And you'll be more likely to assume that it's true because it'll have this familiar ring to it, even though at one point you were conscious of the fact that that rumor was completely false.
5:24
In politics, politicians oftentimes will use this to their advantage by repeating something that their opponent said out of context, or even distort what they said in the belief that voters will forget where they heard it, but they'll remember what they heard.
5:41
The next flaw of memory is that memory is constructive. It's not the video recorder we like to think it is.
5:49
It can change between the point of encoding and the point of retrieval.
5:54
Do you remember what that time period is called?
5:58
It's the retention interval. We'll talk much more about memory construction later in this lecture presentation. But for now, I'll leave you with the fact that there is no way to differentiate conclusively between real memories and false memories.
6:16
Before we move on from constructive memory, I want to give you a research example.
6:21
In this research example, two groups of college students were given the same story about a woman named Betty. It contained information about her life story, including the fact that she occasionally dated men. After reading the story, one group of students was told that Betty had come out as a lesbian, while the other group was told that she led a heterosexual lifestyle. One week later, students returned to the lab and were asked several questions including, "In high school Betty, a,
6:54
occasionally dated men, b, never went out with men, c, went steady with men, and d, no information provided.
7:04
The group who were told that she had come out as a lesbian remembered that she never went out with men, despite the fact that they had been told in the passage that she did occasionally date men. Their new knowledge that she had come out as a lesbian affected the prior memory of the passage that they had read.
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The last flaw of memory that we'll discuss here is forgetting. The biggest issue with forgetting is that we're unaware of what's forgotten.
7:38
We can't know what we don't remember.
7:41
Many biases in decision-making, in particular, occur because we think there is no evidence for something, when in fact we just have forgotten that evidence.
7:52
Because people can't remember what they have forgotten, they tend to feel overconfident about their decision-making.
8:02
So memories are often encoded without our awareness or our intention. They're unequally available for recall and they're often biased.
8:12
On this slide we're going to discuss the relationship between attention and memory. Starting with selective attention. As I already mentioned, we can only attend to a certain amount of information in our environment at a time. It's impossible to pay attention to everything, there's just simply too much going on.
8:35
We can only remember what we pay attention to, and that is what we encode at the time of the experience. If we're not paying attention to something, we are also not encoding that memory.
8:51
Those of you who like to pause the recording to view the video, I encourage you to pause here to watch the video "Selective Attention" and to watch the video "Change Blindness," which we'll be discussing next.
9:05
Change blindness is a specific form of selective attention.
9:09
Change blindness refers to the fact that because we can't attend to all information, we're vulnerable to missing changes in our environment that we might actually think we would notice. Sometimes these are big changes, and you'd be surprised how big of a change could occur in your line of sight without you noticing it.
9:33
The cocktail party effect is another example of selective attention.
9:38
An example of the cocktail party effect would be if you were at a party and you're having a small group conversation, maybe you're talking to three or four other people and it's a loud noisy room. You're not paying attention to every conversation going on around you. You're simply attending to what's happening in the conversation you're participating in. And then all of a sudden, you hear your name across the room, and it's like a pin drops.
10:04
Now, you clearly hear that conversation where your name was brought up, even though there are potentially five to ten other conversations between where you are and where that conversation is taking place. We attend to information that seems meaningful to us, and our names always draw in our attention.
10:26
Another example of the cocktail party effect that has occurred in my life. My name is Ashleigh, which you'd be surprised sounds very similar to "actually." In class, it seemed that whenever I was drifting off into my own set of thoughts, a professor would say "actually" mid-lecture. And all of a sudden I'd be drawn immediately out of whatever I was thinking about, and on pins and needles thinking I was about to be called on.
10:55
You might not have noticed this before, but people tend to put a big pause after the word "actually," which really keeps you hanging there. "He actually..." And then the professor would continue on with what they were saying, and I'd realize it wasn't about me at all.
11:13
Next we'll talk about the confirmation bias.
11:17
We'll talk much more about the confirmation bias later in the course, but I want to introduce the concept here.
11:24
The confirmation bias refers to the fact that we look for information that confirms what we believe, and we more easily disregard information that contradicts it.
11:34
Essentially, we gather and evaluate information selectively. We pay more attention to the information that aligns with what we want to believe, and we do a pretty good job of disregarding information that makes us question what we believe, that contradicts it in some way, or that doesn't provide the evidence that we're looking for.
11:55
Unfortunately, this makes people more likely to persevere in their belief systems despite valid evidence to the contrary.
12:04
It also leads to overconfidence in memories and in belief systems.
12:11
There's an advantage to remembering vivid, dramatic, and familiar events.
12:17
Therefore, it is easier to create memories for some experiences than others, and those memories tend to feel stronger.
12:26
This can lead to confusion of events as experienced, versus events as heard, discussed, or read about.
12:34
Because we have a tendency to create memories based not only on a lived experience, but also as observed, or as heard, or as read, we can create memories about things we never actually experienced.
12:50
This tendency to remember information that is more vivid and more dramatic, leads to a heuristic we'll discuss later in the course, known as the availability heuristic.
13:03
This availability heuristic dramatically affects risk perception. For example,
13:10
flying versus driving following 9/11. So, there were an estimated
13:17
2,170 additional deaths on the road in the time period following 9/11, because people developed an intense fear of flying based on the dramatic and sensationalized videos and footage related to 9/11. The outcome was that people felt safer driving compared to flying despite the fact that statistically, flying is a much safer choice. The judicial system also capitalizes on our tendency to remember vivid and dramatic information more strongly
13:51
than other sources of information. That's why attorneys often use visual aids and remind jurors of major points throughout the trial. The visual aids generally will act on this tendency towards remembering vivid and dramatic information, while reminding the jurors of the major points throughout the trial help to create that sense of familiarity.
14:16
Lastly, the pollyanna principle. The pollyanna principle refers to our natural tendency to attend to and remember positive experiences, compared to more negative experiences.
14:28
It underlies the fact that women following childbirth who say they'll never go through that kind of horrific experience again, oftentimes do have more children.
14:38
We forget just how bad some bad experiences can be, and we tend to have a rosier view and sometimes even remember things more positively than they actually occurred. This happens quite a bit in relationships. After they're over, there's a tendency to look back and see them as potentially a little bit better than they actually were, and start to question "Why did I leave that person?" "Why didn't that relationship work out?" "Maybe we need to try again?"
15:06
So we're prone to recalling more positive than negative phenomena from our memories.
15:13
Please note that this is not generally true for people who are experiencing depression. They tend to have the opposite effect.
15:21
Some people, particularly those who feel uncomfortable focusing on the positive, actively try to counteract the pollyanna effect by reflecting on negative phenomenon and negative experiences. Oftentimes, this is done in a way to protect them from being disappointed later on, or from having negative experiences that feel like they kind of come out of nowhere that they're unprepared for.
15:49
Now that you've been exposed to some of the flaws of memory, let's dive in to the idea of false memories.
15:59
There is quite a bit of controversy over whether people can recover what are known as repressed memories. Repressed memories generally refer to memories that have been kind of stuffed down outside of conscious awareness, due to the traumatic nature of that memory. Essentially, the idea that because that memory is too threatening for that individual, that individual will compartmentalize, or will repress and push down those memories from awareness.
16:30
There are mixed feelings about the concept of repressed memories,
16:35
but generally people agree that it's a risky concept due to the constructive nature of memory.
16:42
It's impossible to tell what a true memory is from a false memory. So the risk of encouraging somebody to develop a false memory isn't without its consequences.
16:56
Research strongly supports the fact that we are vulnerable to false memory creation.
17:02
It is very possible to create false memories that feel exceptionally real.
17:08
And again, there's no way to differentiate these real memories from false memories. And that's also true of a real memory that has been altered to be inaccurate.
17:20
Therapists, like myself, must be really mindful about digging for memories and making suggestions that increase the risk of a false memory construction or an inaccurate memory alteration. We have to be particularly concerned about the risk of planting false memories.
17:40
Those of you who like to pause to watch the videos might also want to pause here to read the article "Repressed Memories." This will talk quite a bit about the concept of repressed memories and its relationship to the constructive nature of memory.
17:58
So not only are we at risk of false memories,
18:02
we are also at the risk of completely encoding information incorrectly at the time of the experience.
18:12
Stress plays a major role in influencing memory encoding and memory storage. And generally, stress impairs memory in two main ways. On a biological level, the hippocampus is affected by stress hormones that are released as part of the stress response. This is particularly true of a component of the stress response, known as glucocorticoids.
18:36
The most well known of which is cortisol.
18:41
Psychologically, the role of stress goes back to what we've talked about already which is, what we're paying attention to affects what we remember.
18:50
So on a psychological level, we tend to respond to our stress by focusing on the things that align with that sense of stress. So for example, there's a tendency to view the assailant in a situation where potentially one is being robbed or raped, to view that person as taller, heavier, stronger, than perhaps they actually are. That means that your memory of that person will be inaccurate because it will be based on the way you perceived the situation, not on the way it actually occurred.
19:28
We're also more likely to attend to the threatening aspects of the situation by focusing on the weapon, like a gun.
19:36
So again, we perceive the assailant through this lens of fear and intimidation, which leads us to focus on certain aspects of the experience over others, such as the weapon, and to misperceive
19:49
aspects of that experience as being more aligned with the fear and intimidation that we're experiencing.
19:57
That leads memories to be encoded inaccurately, which means they're recalled inaccurately.
20:03
I want you to think for a moment. What are the implications for the criminal justice system?
20:09
If this Smurf was giving an eyewitness testimony of Gargamel, would his description be accurate?
20:15
What factors might impact his eyewitness testimony? And that leads us into the discussion of eyewitness testimony.
20:25
Eyewitness testimony is highly valued by the U.S. Judicial System. It oftentimes can make the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.
20:35
Now at this point in the lecture, this should be concerning. If information can only be accurately remembered if it was accurately encoded, should we be putting the amount of weight on eyewitness testimony that we do?
20:49
Keep in mind also, the victims and witnesses are usually under immense stress. And again, that impairs the encoding of the memory.
21:00
Alterations can also occur during the retention interval.
21:04
Often, this is due to discussions of the crime impacting the memory of the event. This is why jurors are sometimes sequestered in high profile cases. I do want to note that the individual, even if their memory turns out to be inaccurate or false, is generally not lying. So please don't misunderstand inaccurate and false memories with intentional dishonesty.
21:31
Almost always, eyewitness testimonies are based on what the individual honestly believes is an accurate description of the person or event. There have been numerous research studies about the constructive nature of memory, many of which are discussed in the video "How Reliable is your Memory?" that's provided in this week's materials. Those of you who like to pause the recording to watch the video might consider doing so now.
22:01
The misinformation effect refers to hearing new information, and that information then interfering with retrieving the original memory.
22:11
They may integrate together and become your reality of that experience. And again, we can't tell real memories from constructed or altered memories. This research study shows us the power of language in affecting our memories.
22:30
So you can see in the bottom left-hand picture, that is the original information given to the research subjects.
22:38
From there, the external information was about how fast the cars were going when they either smashed into each other, hit each other, or contacted each other. Based on which verb was used, participants estimated the mile per hour speed differently. "Smashed into" was estimated at an average of 40.8 miles per hour. When the verb "hit" was used, it was reduced to 34 miles per hour. And when "contacted" was used, all the way down to 30.8 miles per hour.
23:17
That's a 10 mile an hour difference based simply on which verb was used in the question that elicited recall of the memory.
23:29
If our memories are so vulnerable to alteration, constructions, and even falsification, how can we elicit memories in a safe way?
23:39
Stewart (1985) introduced the cognitive interview, which is a method of interviewing people that helps them to most accurately recall the details of an event. It's not foolproof. There can still be issues with the accuracy of the memory, but it helps to elicit accurate memories.
24:00
The cognitive interview is based on findings in cognitive psychology about how information is organized, and the types of retrieval cues that can help work to prime recall.
24:11
Accuracy and completeness of recall is improved by elaboration, especially objects and activities that occurred near the crime in time or space.
24:23
The cognitive interview is not only used in the capacity of law enforcement and the judicial system, the cognitive interview can be used for any event you need to remember. Even something as mundane as missing keys.
24:39
Let's start with step one. Step one is to recall ordinary events, mood, anything leading up to the event before it occurred. What was going on that day? Were you hungry? Were you tired? Were you driving down a familiar street? Did you have a chat on the phone with your mom in the car? What was going on before the event occurred?
25:04
Two. It's very important, and this is more of a rule than a step, but at no point can the report be edited or restricted. It really needs to be stream of consciousness.
25:18
As a side note, I would also argue that all journaling should be done this way. Trying to write the perfect journal entry, or restrict it to just the things you want to focus on, or perhaps just the things you might be comfortable if somebody discovered your diary might be okay finding, really doesn't get the full value of journaling. The same goes with a cognitive interview. It's important that everything that comes up is verbalized as part of the report.
25:48
Step 3, try to recall the information in multiple ways. So multiple timelines.
25:55
That means we're calling it forward, and then backward, from the end of the event towards the beginning, and then from the middle, from the middle to the end, and from the middle to the beginning. Sometimes just mixing up the perspective on the timeline can help the person recall other aspects of the experience that they might not be remembering at that time.
26:19
Step 4, to change perspectives or to try a different point of view. This would be to try to recall the event from the perspective of somebody else who is there. So what would this have looked like from the assailant's perspective? Or if you were at 7/11 for example, from the cashier's perspective, from a bystander's perspective, and if nobody else is there perhaps even what would this look like from the perspective of the soda machine?
26:49
While we're on the topic of recalling information, I also want to point out two other helpful steps.
26:58
When you're trying to recall information like a name for example, it can be helpful to recite the alphabet out loud slowly. Sometimes just hearing the first letter can help trigger our memory of the full name. This also works with numbers. If you're trying to recall a digit of some sort, to start saying numbers aloud, or to start focusing on any aspect of a physical characteristic of that number that you do remember. Is there a curve? Is there a line?
27:28
That can help trigger that memory to come back.
27:32
The other strategy that can be helpful is retracing your steps when something's missing. So again, going back to the key example, you might think about when did I last have the keys in my hand? What did I do at that point? So I walked into my front door, I must have used my keys to unlock it, where did I go next? Oh, right. I went to the kitchen because I was hungry. Oh, there are my keys. They're in the fridge, next to the turkey.
27:58
Now that we've finished the content of this lecture presentation, I want to encourage you to reflect on some questions.
28:06
First, in what ways does selective attention influence your memories and your belief systems?
28:14
Next, what is the relationship between memory and stereotypes?
28:21
Three, can you think of an example in which recalling false memories can have negative consequences?
28:28
Four, how can you protect against false memories for yourself or for others?
28:36
And five, of the memory flaws, biases, and pitfalls that were mentioned in this lecture presentation,
28:43
which do you find the most problematic in your life?
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