Daniel Gilbert's entertaining and enlightening book, Stumbling on Happiness, describes how memory works; a description that should humble anyone harboring the illusion of a great memory. Our brain's capacity is huge, but not nearly large enough to store every sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and emotion we experience. It turns out we make up much of what we think we remember.
Have you ever argued passionately with someone about your recollection of a past situation that you both experienced? If you're like most of us the answer is yes, and the resulting argument might never have been settled because you both may have been simultaneously right and wrong.
Because the brain can't store every detail, it makes up for this limitation by storing just enough to recall a past experience. This generally is sufficient for our needs, but does lead to eye-witness fallibility and lots of personal arguments over past experiences.
Gilbert explains it this way. We compress the huge amount of data that we perceive in a given experience into a few critical components: the sensory highlights and associated emotions. Later, as we recall the event, our mind brings up the highlights and emotions and fills in the rest. That's right, we imagine what would have occurred to smooth out the few pieces of fact and form a complete story.
This is all very interesting, but what value is this information beyond water-cooler talk? How about fewer arguments? Wouldn't that contribute to a more tranquil life? How about better decisions? Isn't that important to your personal growth?
- The next time you are set to dig into your version of a past event in a heated discussion (or bet) with another person, remind yourself your memory is only a partial recording of what occurred. You both may be right.
- Be tolerant of memory lapses of other people. You have them too.
- Don't depend on another person's memory of an event or experience. It's close but not an exact replica of what occurred.
- Remind yourself that your memory isn't an exact replica either.
- Decisions are often easier if we base them on past experiences. Now you know that your recollection of past experience may be faulty or incomplete. Keep that in mind with major decisions.
- It's fine to ask advice of other people, but recognize that if the advice comes from past experiences it is partly fiction.
In the future, if recollection of a past event is important to you because of a disagreement, to make a decision, or to learn from it, consider the emotion that accompanied the past event. The emotion at the time will provide clues about the role that imagination played in recalling the past event. And remember that the past is past, our memories are fallible, and part of what we each remember is illusion.
