The Psychology Book (65 page)

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 207

such as a description of the mall,

disturbing dream is more vividly

were worked out in collaboration

recalled and even mistaken for

with the relatives. Interviewed

reality. It was this idea that

about these stories one week later

prompted her to say, “what we

and then again two weeks later, the

believe with all our hearts is not

participants were asked to rate how

necessarily the truth.”

In real life, as well as in

well they remembered the events in

However, in 1986, psychologists

experiments, people can

the four stories. At both interviews,

John Yuille and Judith Cutshall

come to believe things that

25% of the participants claimed to

did manage to conduct a study of

never really happened.

have some memory of the mall

memory following a traumatic

Elizabeth Loftus

incident. After the experiment,

situation. They found that witnesses

participants were debriefed and

to an actual incident of gun shooting

told that one of the stories was

had remarkably accurate memories,

false—did they know which it was?

even six months after the event, and

Of the 24 participants, 19 correctly

resisted attempts by the researchers

chose the mall as the false memory;

to distort their memories though

but five participants had grown to

misleading questions.

sincerely believe in a false memory

used to recover memory, including

of a mildly traumatic event.

Questionable therapy

psychotherapeutic techniques such

Loftus had provided an insight

Loftus points out that her findings

as regression, dream work, and

into how false memories might form

do not deny that crimes such as

hypnosis. Consequently, it raised

in real, everyday settings. For ethical

abuse may have taken place, nor can

the possibility that false memories

reasons Loftus could not devise an

she prove that repressed memories

can be implanted during the

experiment to test whether a truly

do not exist; she merely stresses the

therapeutic process by suggestion,

traumatic false memory (such as

unreliability of recovered memory,

and in the 1990s several US

child abuse) would be even more

and insists that courts must seek

patients who claimed they were

vividly recalled and sincerely

evidence beyond this. Her work

victims of “false memory syndrome”

believed, but she suggested that it

has also called into question the

successfully sued their therapists.

would, in the same way that a more

validity of the various methods

Unsurprisingly, this apparent attack

on the very idea of repressed

Despite the unreliability
of

memory earned an adverse reaction

eyewitness testimony, Loftus found

that jurors tend to give more weight

from some psychotherapists, and

to it than any other form of evidence

split opinion among psychologists

when reaching a verdict.

working in the field of memory.

Reaction from the legal world was

also divided, but after the hysteria

surrounding a series of child abuse

scandals in the 1990s had died

down, guidelines incorporating

Loftus’s theories on the reliability

of eyewitness testimony were

Do you swear to tell

adopted by many legal systems.

the truth, the whole truth,

Today, Loftus is acknowledged

or whatever it is you

as an authority on the subject of

think you remember?

false memory. Her theories have

Elizabeth Loftus

become accepted by mainstream

psychology and have inspired

further research into the fallibility

of memory in general, notably

by Steven Schacter in his book,

The Seven Sins of Memory
. ■

208

THE SEVEN SINS

OF MEMORY

DANIEL SCHACTER (1952– )

The first three Schacter calls “sins

IN CONTEXT

F
orgetting, Daniel Schacter

believes, is an essential

of omission,” or forgetting, and the

function of human memory,

last four are “sins of commission,”

APPROACH

allowing it to work efficiently. Some

or remembering. Each sin can

Memory studies

of the experiences we go through

lead to a particular type of error

BEFORE

and the information we learn may

in recollecting information.

1885
Hermann Ebbinghaus

need to be remembered, but much

The first of the sins, transience,

describes the “forgetting

is irrelevant and would take up

involves the deterioration of memory,

curve” in
Memory
.

valuable “storage space” in our

especially of episodic memory (the

memory, so is “deleted,” to use an

memory of events), over time. This

1932
Frederic Bartlett lists

analogy with computers that is

is due to two factors: we can recall

seven ways in which a story

often made in cognitive psychology.

more of a recent event than one in

may be misremembered in

Sometimes, however, the process

the distant past; and each time we

his book
Remembering
.

of selection fails. What should have

remember the event (retrieve the

1956
George Armitage Miller

been tagged as useful information

memory), it is reprocessed in the

publishes his paper
The

and stored for future use is removed

brain, altering it slightly.

from memory and therefore forgotten;

Magical Number Seven,

or—conversely—trivial or unwanted

Plus or Minus Two
.

information that should have been

1972
Endel Tulving makes the

removed is kept in our memory.

distinction between semantic

Storage is not the only area of

and episodic memory.

memory functioning with potential

problems. The process of retrieval

We don’t want a

AFTER

can cause confusion of information,

memory that is going

1995
Elizabeth Loftus studies

giving us distorted recollections.

to store every bit of every

retroactive memory in
The

Schacter lists seven ways in which

experience. We would

Formation of False Memories
.

memory can let us down: transience,

be overwhelmed with

2005
US psychologist Susan

absent-mindedness, blocking,

clutter of useless trivia.

Clancy studies apparent

misattribution, suggestibility, bias,

Daniel Schacter

memories of alien abduction.

and persistence. In a reference to

the Seven Deadly Sins, and with a

nod to George Armitage Miller’s

“magical number seven,” he calls

these the “seven sins of memory.”

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 209

See also:
Hermann Ebbinghaus 48–49 ■ Bluma Zeigarnik 162 ■ George Armitage Miller 168–73 ■ Endel Tulving 186–91 ■

Gordon H. Bower 194–95 ■ Elizabeth Loftus 202–07 ■ Frederic Bartlett 335–36

Absent-mindedness, the sin that

The Seven Sins of Memory

manifests itself in mislaid keys and

missed appointments, is not so

much an error of recollection but

of selection for storage. Sometimes

…
transience
.

we do not pay enough attention at

Sometimes we
forget

the time we do things (such as

important things

when we put down keys), so the

because of…

…
absent-mindedness
.

information is treated by the brain

as trivial and not stored for later

use. In contrast to this is the sin of

blocking, where a stored memory

…
blocking
.

cannot be retrieved, often because

another memory is getting in its

way. An example of this is the

“tip-of-the-tongue” syndrome,

And sometimes our

memories become

…
misattribution
.

where we can nearly—but not

confused
through…

quite—grasp a word from memory

that we know very well.

...
suggestibility
.

Sins of commission

The “sins of commission” are

slightly more complex, but no less

common. In misattribution, the

…
bias
.

information is recalled correctly,

And sometimes we

but the source of that information

remember things
we want

is wrongly recalled. It is similar in

to forget
through…

its effect to suggestibility, where

…
persistence
.

recollections are influenced by the

way in which they are recalled, for

example, in response to a leading

question. The sin of bias also

whose work on episodic versus

Daniel Schacter

involves the distortion of recollection:

semantic memory was causing

this is when a person’s opinions

Daniel Schacter was born in

lively debate at the time. In

and feelings at the time of recalling

New York in 1952. A high-school

1981, he established a unit for

an event color its remembrance.

course sparked his interest in

memory disorders at Toronto,

Finally, the sin of persistence is

psychology, which he went on to

with Tulving and Morris

an example of the memory working

study at the University of North

Moscovitch. Ten years later, he

too well. This is when disturbing or

Carolina. After graduation, he

became Professor of Psychology

upsetting information that has

worked for two years in

at Harvard, where he set up the

been stored in memory becomes

the perception and memory

Schacter Memory Laboratory.

intrusively and persistently recalled,

laboratory of Durham Veterans

Hospital, observing and testing

Key works

from minor embarrassments to

patients with organic memory

extremely distressing memories.

disorders. He then began

1982
Stranger Behind the

However, the sins aren’t flaws,

postgraduate studies at Toronto

Engram

Schacter insists, but the costs we

University, Canada, under the

1996
Searching for Memory

pay for a complex system that works

supervision of Endel Tulving,

2001
The Seven Sins of Memory

exceptionally well most of the time. ■