Memory Lane

Memory Lane

Look, the winter is past, and the rains are over and gone.

Song of Songs 2:11

Current research says that memory is reconstructed as much as it is reproduced. In other words, we may be just as likely to re-create events as we are to remember them exactly. In many experiments, involving more than twenty thousand people in all, professor of psychology and law Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues have shown that eyewitnesses actually reconstruct their memories. For example, in one experiment a filmed traffic accident was shown to subjects who were then asked different questions about what they had seen. While one group was asked, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” the other was asked, “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” Those who heard the word smashed gave higher speed estimates than those who heard the word hit and, a week later, recalled seeing more than twice as much broken glass at the scene as the other group did. In fact, there had been no glass broken in the accident, but the question was enough to suggest that there was, and that was enough to re-create a memory.

What Loftus’s experiment demonstrated is known as the misinformation effect, which describes the phenomenon of people misremembering reality even when supplied with only subtle misinformation. Apparently the misinformation effect is so subconscious that later on it is nearly impossible for witnesses to tell the difference between actual memories and those that were only suggested to them.^a That’s because when we fill in our memories’ gaps by guesses or assumptions, those guesses now truly become part of our memories. As novelist Anaïs Nin put it, “Memory is a great betrayer.”

How does this subtle memory creation affect marriage? Well, let’s say you notice a pattern of lashing out in anger at your spouse. You may start to recall how your father did that very same thing to you. Ah, no wonder I have issues with anger—it all makes sense now. Or does it? Obviously it is possible to remember what actually happened to you, but the point is that sometimes your memory may say it was so whether it was or not.

Is there some unfortunate behavior in your marriage that you are a little too willing to blame on your past? Why not focus on the present? Are you willing to let your spouse speak into your life on that issue? What can you do today to put your memories behind you and revise your present?

We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

—Charles R. Swindoll

^a 87