Monday, August 3, 2020
post 3 (False Memories)
Elizabeth Loftus' Ted talk at the end of the lecture really caught my attention. To me, Elizabeth makes a living off of understanding false memories and her overall thesis on the subject is misinformation will change or alter our identities. I can believe this to an extent. I think only misinterpretation of horrific memories can change our identities because these are the things we fear, things we stay away from, things that we will more than likely never encounter again. No matter if our memory is right or wrong, it is what we think and sense therefore this memory will make the brain do all it can to avoid fear. Besides a traumatic moment in time, I believe small memory misjudgment will not have an impact on our identities because if we have trouble remembering exactly what happened, why would we think about that memory at all. To me it seems unimportant if we cannot recollect the memory and it should be dumped from the brains file space.
One thing I learned when I took a psychology course, my professor said our memory is like a slice of Swiss cheese. It starts with no holes, but as it gets older, the holes start to form. These holes represent memory loss and we use other memories to try to fill in the holes. I looked at this in a very logical way, and just assumed false memories are something along those lines.
ReplyDelete