The actor Alan Alda once visited a group of memory researchers at the University of California, Irvine, for a TV show he was making. During a picnic lunch, one of the scientists offered Alda a hard-boiled egg. He turned it down, explaining that as a child he had made himself sick eating too many eggs.
In fact, this had never happened, yet Alda believed it was real. How so? The egg incident was a false memory planted by one of UC Irvine’s researchers, Elizabeth Loftus.
Before the visit, Loftus had sent Alda a questionnaire about his food preferences and personality. She later told him that a computer analysis of his answers had revealed some facts about his childhood, including that he once made himself sick eating too many eggs. There was no such analysis but it was enough to convince Alda.
Your memory may feel like a reliable record of the past, but it is not. Loftus has spent the past 30 years studying the ease with which we can form “memories” of nonexistent events. She has convinced countless people that they have seen or done things when they haven’t – even quite extreme events such as being attacked by animals or almost drowning. Her work has revealed much about how our brains form and retain memories.
While we wouldn’t want to plant a memory of a nonexistent childhood trauma in your own brain, there is a less dramatic demonstration of how easy it is to form a false memory called the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Read the first two lists of words and pause for a few minutes. Then scroll down and read list 3. Put a tick against the words that were in the first two. Now go back and check your answers.
LIST ONE
APPLE, VEGETABLE, ORANGE, KIWI,
CITRUS, RIPE, PEAR, BANANA, BERRY
CHERRY, BASKET, JUICE, SALAD, BOWL, COCKTAIL
LIST TWO
WEB, INSECT, BUG, FRIGHT, FLY
ARACHNID, CRAWL, TARANTULA, POISON
BITE, CREEPY, ANIMAL, UGLY, FEELERS, SMALL
SCROLL DOWN
LIST THREE
SPIDER, FEATHER, CITRUS, UGLY, ROBBER,
PIANO, GOAT, GROUND, CHERRY, BITTER,
INSECT, FRUIT, SUBURB, KIWI, QUICK,
MOUSE, PILE, FISH
MICHAEL MICHALKO is the author of the best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), which the Wall Street Journal reported “will change the way you think.” He is also the author of Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Geniuses) which describes the common thinking strategies creative geniuses have used in the sciences, art, and industry throughout history and shows how we can apply them to become more creative in our business and personal lives. In addition, he created Thinkpak (A Brainstorming Card Set), which is a novel creative-thinking tool that is designed to facilitate brainstorming sessions. Michael’s most recent book Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work focuses on how creative geniuses combine and conceptually blend dissimilar subjects create original thoughts and ideas. http://www.creativethinking.net
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