Change We Mistakenly Believe In

Here's a common example of confirmation bias and selective memory most of us have experienced:  do you think we should stick with our first instinct when answering a test question?  Most of us think we should.  After all, so many of us remember lots of times where we initially circled the right answer, only to cross it out and choose another.

The problem with this is that research suggests that our first instincts are no more reliable than our second-guessing.  Why does the myth persist?  Well, we're more likely to remember the times we second-guessed and got it wrong than the times we second-guessed and got it right.  Switching away from the right answer is just so frustrating that it's a more memorable event.  So if I got back the following test...

...I'd probably only notice that I changed #6 and #7 to the wrong answer.  I'd be much less likely to notice that I changed #1 and #3 to the right answer.

More to Forget

Here's more on the less of memory:

• Here's an overview on the way our memory is faulty by psychologist Gary Marcus. He's written a book called Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.
• Even strong "flashbulb memories" like what you were doing on 9/11 are not very accurate.
• One leading expert on memory is psychologist Elizabeth Loftus (she's mentioned in our textbook, and we talked about her in class). Here is a pair of articles that summarize her research on false memories, and here's a video of her presenting on it.
• Here's an article on the unreliability of eyewitness identification.
• Here's an article that suggests many jurors seem to prefer eyewitness testimony over forensic evidence.  Given how unreliable our memories are, that's pretty scary.  Here's a quote:
  

  "Despite all our scientific know-how, jurors weighing life and death decisions still crave what Leone calls the 'human element:' the act of watching another person testify and deciding if they’re telling the truth.
  

  
  "As these witnesses enter the courtroom, a hush often falls on the gallery. Jurors — bored by days of dry testimony given by well-rehearsed experts — lean forward in their seats, pens at the ready to take notes about what the eyewitness has to say. They have seen this moment on television, too, and it’s usually really, really interesting."

Filling in Memory

Here's a section (pages 78-80) from psychologist Dan Gilbert's great book Stumbling on Happiness about how memory works:



The preview cuts off at the bottom of page 80. Here's the rest from that section:

"...reading the words you saw. But in this case, your brain was tricked by the fact that the gist word--the key word, the essential word--was not actually on the list. When your brain rewove the tapestry of your experience, it mistakenly included a word that was implied by the gist but that had not actually appeared, just as volunteers in the previous study mistakenly included a stop sign that was implied by the question they had been asked but that had not actually appeared in the slides they saw.

"This experiment has ben done dozens of times with dozens of different word lists, and these studies have revealed two surprising findings. First, people do not vaguely recall seeing the gist word and they do not simply guess that they saw the gist word. Rather, they vividly remember seeing it and they feel completely confident that it appeared. Second, this phenomenon happens even when people are warned about it beforehand. Knowing that a researcher is trying to trick you into falsely recalling the appearance of a gist word does not stop that false recollection from happening."

Too many words, Sean! Can't you just put up a video? You better make it funny, too!

Fine. Here's Dan Gilbert on The Colbert Report:

Misidentification

Here's an excellent, short video explanation of the unreliability of memory that ends with a dog licking peanut butter off a guy's face:


And here's a more serious video (that we watched in class) on the tragedy of misidentifying a suspect:

Direct Experience

Here are the two videos we watched in class. First, watch this:


Next, watch this:


Finally, here's an article on this issue. Still trust your direct experience?