How good was that family holiday?Can you remember what you had for lunch this day last week? How about yesterday? Chances are you answered no to the first question and struggled with the second. This exercise is a good reminder of how questionable human memory can be (terrible pun there, but at least its out of the way now). Yet, forgetting what I had for lunch yesterday probably isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Forgetting about that baked potato isn’t the end of the world. However, there are many other instances in which inaccurate, distorted and biased memories could be very important in the scheme of things.
When strolling around the world and deciding what will and won’t be enjoyable in the future we are almost completely dependent on our memories. For example, when deciding whether to order a baked potato we don’t consult a notebook with scores for every previous baked potatoes we have eaten (it would be time consuming and just a bit weird). We instead rely on how enjoyable we remember eating a baked potato to be. But what if our memory for our enjoyment of baked potatoes isn’t accurate? We may end up making the same error in food choice over and over again. This blog will discuss how such hypothetical memory errors may be quite common and can therefore have significant influence on what we choose to do with our lives.
Take a study by Wirtz et al (2005). Prior to spring break (an American academic holiday that you only ever hear about in films) researchers recruited university students. Two weeks prior to their break participants popped into the laboratory and predicted how much they thought they'd enjoy their holiday. During their holiday participants were provided with tiny hand-held computers and at random intervals (signalled by a beep) would be asked to rate how happy, sad and satisfied they were with the holiday at that moment. After a couple of weeks of holidaying, beeping and rating participants then returned to the laboratory and recalled and rated how much they had enjoyed their holiday. The researchers then used their hand held computers to average each participants online ratings to produce a score for their overall holiday enjoyment.
As you might expect participants memory for their overall holiday enjoyment wasn’t very accurate. Their memories were ‘rose tinted’, tending to remember the overall experience as being more positive than it actually was. One explanation for these results is a tendency to remember and rely upon the stand out parts of events (we unknowingly rely on the good parts of the holiday as they’re more memorable). What is even more interesting is that when asked how likely they would be to repeat the holiday, analysis revealed that they based this upon their rose tinted memories rather than the actual online experience. So this study shows that not only do we misremember (which is worrying enough), but we then use this information to shape our future. Think back: were the dreaded suitcase weigh in (please god don’t let it be 20.1kg), plane delay, hangovers, arguments and 12 o’clock room kick out really worth it?
Another memory error is known as the ‘end effect bias’. This being a bias to give a disproportionately large weighting to the end parts of an experience when recalling how enjoyable the overall experience was. This effect has been replicated in numerous studies. For example; listening to a piece of music with a very enjoyable segment at the end of the experience results in a far more positive memory of the music overall, compared to placing that segment at the start or middle. At first glances this doesn’t seem all that important. But it really is. A poor first 12 days in Menorca ended with 2 exceptional days makes another wise substandard holiday appear to be something it wasn’t. It might not even be too far fetched to suggest that DVD sales for films with outstanding endings such as Atonement, Fight Club and The Sixth Sense may have profited from this unobvious memory bias.
End effects can even have rather large ramifications in the medical world too. Take a study by Kahneman et al. (2003). The researchers were interested in further examining end effects and whether or not they could manipulate and distort participant memories. Colonoscopy – this is a very painful medical procedure involving a tube, camera and your anus. Enough said. Working with a massive group of patients that were due to undergo this procedure the researchers split their participants into two groups. The first group had the usual procedure. The second group had exactly the same procedure except for a twist: the surgeon left the tip of the tube in for an additional 10 seconds. This extra 10 seconds was slightly less painful than the rest of the procedure (it was only the tip). However, participants still experienced an extra 10 seconds of moderate discomfort!
To the results – due to this end effect bias patients with the slightly less painful ending (but actual longer experience of pain) remembered the procedure to have been significantly less painful than the normal patients. As well as ranking the procedure as less painful compared to several other aversive experiences they’d had before. And it gets even better: patients in the second group were also far more likely to return for repeat a colonoscopy several months later. Thus, as memory plays a pivotal role in driving behaviour we should be aware that it can be prone to inaccuracies and biases.
A serious and not so serious applications and a question
-When recalling how good something was ensure you weight up the good and the bad as well as the less obvious and sometimes boring parts of the experience. To avoid ignorance they should all count.
-Don’t worry too much about the first ¾’s and leave your most engaging anecdotes till last when on a date. It could be the difference between scenario 1 and scenario 2.
Scenario 1 – A second date.
Scenario 2 -Checking your phone every 5 minutes and getting by on extremely wishful thinking that your phones text message receiver is broken.
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