The vagaries of memory

We have all heard how eye witness testimony can be wrong: where witnesses can go from 100% sure to being proven to be gob-smackedly incorrect in the light of later DNA, or video, evidence. Having just watched a documentary from Deutsche Welle (DW) on memory which goes into the mechanics of how this happens, I thought I would share the documentary's thinking with you.

Apparently our memories start - for the first twelve months or so - being quite 'plastic'. Our memories evolve with how often we revisit them, and in how many times we rehearse each memory, what confirmation we are offered as to 'correctness', and how each memory fits into our group, or societal, meta-memory (if you will). The documentary talked about a longitudinal study run by memory scientists following the Al Qaeda attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. Survey participants could remember where they were and what they were doing soon after the event itself. However, after one year, participant memories of what they were doing and where they were had often changed. From that point on - a point of 'concreteness', in a way, the memory stayed consistent, even out to ten years. It seems that once we have crafted a story that we can live with, we hold it close and nurse it (DW Documentary, 2020).

I resonated with the 11 September 2001 event, but remain sure (!) that I remember my initial thoughts correctly. I awoke to my alarm radio station talking about the first plane having flown into one of the World Trade Center towers, thinking "This is the last time I am listening to The Rock: their practical jokes are simply not funny anymore". Then I got curious and turned on the TV, to find that The Rock was reporting real events as they unfolded. Then I felt guilty for assuming they were pulling the listeners' legs. Shades of The Shepherd's Boy Who Cried Wolf (Aesop, 1912).

Apparently 30% of North American witness testimony is accurate (DW Documentary, 2020). Logically then, the other 70% is inaccurate. That is a fairly scary percentage: consider how many people must have been convicted or fined based on dodgy memory.

While the documentary talks about police practices which help to ensure that we do not edit our memories when it counts, I think we need to do things that help us to remember our lives in all their joyful, and all their shame-filled moments.

I was thinking then that we could keep a diary, and record daily those events which happen to us, along with our thoughts and our feelings. Today's fresh thoughts may be more accurate than those we have self-massaged, or have been manipulated from the outside by others.

Sam

References:

• Aesop (1912). Aesop's Fables: a new translation by V. S. Vernon Jones. William Heinemann.
• DW Documentary (21 December 2020). When our minds play tricks on us. https://youtu.be/MmlXY-hzgm0

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The Importance of Open Mindedness

Open-mindedness is a very interesting concept. The idea is that we build capacity through having a flexible commitment to plans, to regularly consider alternatives, adopt differing perspectives and assume that what was true in the past is unlikely to be true in the future (Daft, 2008).

Developing this state of mind as a personal habit, helps to prevent us atrophying, and avoids us getting stuck in methods, practices and theories which are outdated or have stopped serving us.

Open-mindedness is not a new idea. The following example, about a naval officer who is getting along in years, is a great illustrator, from 100 years ago:

Very young ensigns often had amazing short cuts in navigation, which he hadn't. He knew those were the better methods, but he followed his own worse ones, as good enough for him. In short he was middleaged and knew he was. He was openminded, in that he was glad the time-saving computations had been invented, but closeminded in that he felt his ways good enough to last out his day. In short he accepted with equanimity the evident fact that he was becoming a back number, and wished well to those who were superseding him. This seemed a reasonably openminded attitude, combining as it did acknowledgment of his own limitations, and acceptance of his own past, with some appreciation of new ideas (Mather, 1919, p. 17).

Mather goes on to say that letting go of fixed and less useful ideas allows us to develop "a boundless hopeful curiosity" (1919, p. 19). What a delightful phrase!

You can watch a short clip on open-mindedness at:


We can develop our open-mindedness muscles by:

• Listening to our language. Absolutes like "it will never work" and "but you always say that" are us bumping into our own close-mindedness.
• We suspend disbelief: just because something didn't work last time doesn't mean the time hasn't come for it to work spectacularly now. That doesn't mean we don't point out potential failures: it means we don't let the barriers prevent our attempt. We stay mindful about the pike syndrome (watch the video).
• When we point out barriers, we also provide potential solutions.
• We use different perspectives to consider issues, such as Edward de Bono's thinking hats (1999) to stretch our thinking muscles and prevent us getting entrenched in one approach.
• We allow our curiosity to help us collectively learn.
• We try to approach things with a child's mind.

Sam

References:

• Daft, Richard L. (2008). The Leadership Experience (4th Edition). USA: Thomson South-Western.
• De Bono, E. (1999). Six Thinking Hats. UK: Penguin.
• Mather, F. J. (1919). The Inside of the Open Mind. In The Unpartizan Review, Vol 12, No. 23 (pp. 16-23). New York, USA: Henry Holt & Company.

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