A false memory is a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event. People often think of memory as something like a video recorder, accurately documenting & storing everything that happens with perfect accuracy & clarity. In reality, while it might be difficult for many people to believe, everyone has false memories. Our memories are generally not as reliable as we think & false memories can form quite easily, even among people who typically have very good memories.
False memory forms because of one's inaccurate perception, inference, emotions, misattribution, fuzzy tracing, & misinformation effect. In the case of misinformation, it happens under a few theories - the original information & the misleading information presented after the fact get blended together in memory; the misleading information actually overwrites the original memory of the event; since the misleading information is more recent in memory it tends to be easier to retrieve; the pertinent data from the original event may never have been encoded into memory in the first place so that when misleading information is presented it's incorporated into the mental narrative to fill in these "gaps" in memory.
While I was always cautious about memory accuracy (as far as I remember, hah!), now I am convinced that no memories are to be trusted. I am confident that we create our memories every day anew, if ever so slightly. It's such a terrifying but beautiful notion that every day you wake up with a slightly different personal past.
My column illustration titled "False Memory" | February 2016
