Our Memories are Lying to Us!

Psychology has always interested me - how the brain works, the processes we go to just to calculate 1 + 1. But the thing that I will focus on today is how we store information we're given to be used later; how me remember things.

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We normally think of memory as a jumbling mass of ideas in our brain that we delve into when we need to, perhaps for an exam, or an important speech. However, I'm here to tell you that what we remember is not actually what happened.

You may have heard that we edit our memories so that they are more appealing to us. For example, you remember eating a whole bar of dark chocolate, when actually you ate a white chocolate one (by the way, dark chocolate is better). This is obviously a simplistic explanation, but it works. An article I read on Science Daily recently said that there was another reason why we edit our memories. We change what we remember so that we can understand what we are currently seeing/hearing/taking in. To illustrate, we may have an idea of what our young childhood was only so that we can explain our actions in the present. Interesting, no?

Also, adults brains are more likely to lie in a court case than a child is, according to another Science Daily article. This is because adults are more used to storing memory, and so are more likely to generate false memories, according to some research. Schizophrenics are also more likely to be truthful than an adult without a psychological disorder.

Who knew? This post hasn't particularly been one full of opinions, but I hope you found it interesting nonetheless!