Who hasn’t forgotten their keys, wallet, passport, or password? Have you ever misremembered an important fact during a presentation or interview? Our brains are wired to misrecall, omit, and repress what matters. We even fabricate events that never happened. Yet, we trust our memory. What we may not realize is just how often salient images seduce us or the power of suggestion influences us.
Memories can be twisted, distorted, and manipulated, either by others or ourselves.
In today’s data-soaked, noisy world, it’s getting impossible to decode information accurately. It’s frightening. We discount this memory-based misinformation because it’s hidden, intangible, and uncomfortable. But it can spark a catalogue of human error that costs not only livelihoods but lives.
As processing capacity is finite, memory is recalled selectively in our neural networks. Studies show that up to 50 percent of our recollection is likely to be wrong, the result of "gist" memory. That’s a lot! Memory operates like your favorite movie but with missing scenes.
In my book Tune In: How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World, I devote a full chapter to neglected memory-based traps—traps that can derail decisions and prompt a rush to misjudgment. Here, I’ve identified several concepts that reveal how your memory lies to you.
1. The Forgetting Curve
When actions become automated, we don’t think about them. Forgetting your keys, wallet, and password is one thing. People also forget that guns are loaded, cigarettes stay burning, and children are left alone. According to KidsandCars.org, an average of........