The Last Impression

“Forget Future, We don’t know correctly even about past”

I wish I could write a diary. I would have avoided a lot of mistakes. You must have seen in suspense thriller movies that a murder or theft happens in the beginning of film and entire plot revolves around that murder/theft incident. Lot of characters comes under circumference of suspicion and at the end when culprit is revealed you jumped from your seat because it is the one who was less susceptible. May be the main character was himself or the close aid of main character. What if it happens in your life? Suppose something wrong happens with you that you don’t like. You had some belief, some idea, some perception, some question for someone and you spend your entire life to find the answer and at the end you realize that main culprit was someone who helped you throughout your life to find the answer. It is your closest aid – Your Memory. Actually that event was never occurred whose explanation you was searching in all your life. It was false creation of your memory.

Suppose you stored 10 pictures in your computer. These pictures are about the three years you spent in your college. Out of these 10 pics, 5 pics are related to your happy moments and 5 pics are related to your sad moments and by looking all these 10 picture you drive the feeling that you spent mixed time in your college but what happens when one day a virus deletes all those photos that reminds you your sad moment so now what will be your overall feeling about your stay in the collage on the basis of available memory (pictures)? You spent a great time in collage. Now consider some another situation if the same virus deletes all the pics related to your happy memories in place of sad memories. Now what will be your feelings? You spent your worst time in your college, isn’t it? In both cases you spent same time. The time already has gone. You only have memories related to event left but on the basis of available memory your perception about your past in entirely different. Suppose you store two images of an event in which one pic of happy face of Mr A and one pic of sad face of Mr B and basis on these two pics you remember that on that day Mr A was happy and Mr B was sad. But one day suppose one virus change the pics and it becomes sad face of Mr A and happy face of Mr B then what will be your perception about that event? Now you will remember that on that day Mr A was sad and Mr B was happy, an entirely different situation that actually never existed. You may give the argument that there are no such computer viruses that can change the face expression in images but there is such virus in your head that can do it and that virus is your mind.

I knew it all along

How many times it happened with you? When you were little hopeful that something could happen but after some time when that thing has happened and then you said that I knew it all along. You not only said it but you confidently believed it that it could happen. I give you example suppose you was watching cricket match between India and Australia and before match you were 100% confident that India was going to win that match but your guess went wrong and Australia defeated India and after the result you completely changed your stance. You said that you already knew that Australia was going to win the match. There were lots of loopholes in Indian bowling. Indian batting was not so deep and not only you would say it you would believe it also that you knew it India would lose the match. Even you would pass lie detector test also. Yes you read it right. How did it happen? It happened because memories stored in the mind have been changed. People have tendency to overestimate their ability to have predicted an outcome that could not possibly have been predicted and their mind play very important role in this biased thinking. Our episodic memory (memory related to a time frame) is not static, our memories are dynamic and the mind has power to change the memory stored in our head.

The Invisible Gaps

So have you locked your door? Have you switched off lights of your room when you left the home? Are you sure? Do you remember the last person you met? What colors of cloths he/she was wearing? Do you trust your memory? Ok let’s forget it. To understand more about our memory phenomena, we need to understand how we create memories. In simplified it contains three processes: Encoding, storing and retrieval. We receive the information of our outer world through our senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) and information received through senses sent to brain for processing and storing in hard disc of brain this process is called encoding. Brain process the information and store them into hippocampus region of brain. You can call hippocampus to hard disc of brain here memories are stored for long time, this process is called storing. Now just try to remember when you were kid and it was your birthday.  If you are able to recollect some memories than this process is called retrieval, retrieving the past memory is like searching a particular book in a big library and it depends upon how efficiently you stored the information in your memory, how many times you recalled it. Now question is do you store everything in your memory that you see and here comes the twist. We do not store everything, every moment in our memory that we see. Just try to remember any short event of today. It may be your half hour drive, your first half our spent in office, first hour of today. Can you remember each and everything of that period? Your answer must be know and reason for that it our brain don’t store each and everything in our memory. It stores selected part of events in memory. You can compare it with the highlights of a cricket or football match. Our brain stores the memory as highlights not as complete event and they too get faded with the time. There are gaps in our memories stored in our hard disc and big problem is we are not aware about these invisible gaps. Just take an example. Suppose today morning you went to park for morning walk and you was in park from 6:00 to 6:10. Do you think your brain stored all the information (trees, flowers, people in the park etc) in your brain? Answer is No. It stored the memories in patches and how much it stored depends upon person to person, how much consciously you were present there. It can be explained by this diagram.

Now the question arises that why we store memories in our hard disc as highlights and not as complete live event and here comes in the picture the second processor in our brain – The Mind.

The Mysterious Driver

Functioning of mind and brain has been explained thoroughly in previous chapters. Pl read the previous chapter “The Mysterious Driver” to understand how brain and mind works and how mind interferes in the functioning of brain. The major difference in the working of mind and brain is that brain work on request while mind works in auto mode that means mind keep working and it tries to hinder in the work of brain. Suppose someone ask you what is the capitol of Japan? Your brain will go to your memory and try to retrieve the capital of Japan that you stored earlier in memory that is called working on request but suppose if you see an ice-cream you don’t need to make any effort you subconscious mind (hard disc of mind) will automatically send you impressions and feelings related to ice cream to your mind and this is the main reason that why we cannot store the memories as complete event and why we store memories as highlights because mind doesn’t allow brain to work continuously it keeps hindering in the brain functioning. So let’s take example of your morning walk again. You went to park for your morning walk and this time you decided that you will give conscious attentions to details and observe all things. You started to walk, you observed plants, flowers, people at that time your brain is recording everything suddenly you saw a guy is red jacket and he recalled he was also looking to buy this jacket. He will check on it on Amazon. There is sale on Amazon in next week. Mobiles will be much discounted price. Lot of new technologies are coming in mobile phone. India is improving in technology. Political discourse of India is changing…………………………and your Mind completely hijacked your brain and you could not record anything of your morning walk for few moments. Then again your conscious brain realized you again starting observing things after few moments you again lost and same happens with us all time. We live life is moments. We spend very less time in present and most of the time we live in past or future that’s why we are not able to store all memories because our brain can store only those memories that is consciously processed through brain so the next moment if someone is looking you then it doesn’t mean he is actually looking you. His eyes are open but maybe he has lost if past or future thoughts. It was an example of only 10 minutes of morning walk. Now let’s apply this knowledge learnt through this morning walk into your entire life. You may be 30 year old, 40 year old or 6o year old but it doesn’t mean that your brain have stored all memories all event into your brain. It has stored only those details and events that were consciously recorded by brain and out of them too you have forgot many events. So now if you think that mind hinders only storing process of brain then you are still wrong. Mind mischiefs don’t ends here. Mind interferes in retrieving process also. 

The False perception

If you are reading this article thoroughly then I will suggest you to hold you chair tightly because time has come to give you shock and the shock is we don’t know about past. We are designed in such a way that we are incomplete when it comes to recalling the past and the more shocking is that we are unaware of it. We store the memories only in packets and basis of those uncomplete memories we form the perception about the past, being aware of it that that perception is biased since its build on insufficient data. Just take the example of today’s morning walk suppose you saw a sad face when you was in your conscious state and when you were busy in your mental thoughts you saw lot of happy faces but you didn’t notice them so they were not stored in your memory so later when you recall the memories of your morning walk you will make the perception that mostly sad people come for walk that is actually completely wrong and you are not aware that how you was ditched by your own memory but problem doesn’t end here. Mind is so powerful that it can create false memories and can fit it coherently into missing gaps and can give you completely false overlook of your past and you can never realize it.

Memory Distortion

What if you know one day that an event that was kept hurting you for long time was actually not happened ever. It was false recreation by your mind in your head. Now till now you have known that mind stores the memories of some episode of your life as highlights and not as complete episode and unfortunately you are not aware of it so when you try to recall those memories then your mind cleverly insert false memories in that highlights of that particular episode and present you as complete episode. You believe that you can remember complete episode but actually it’s a reconstructed event by your mind that actually never happened.

The most influential experiments on memory distortions were performed by the British psychologist Frederic Bartlett almost sixty years ago. Bartlett’s participants were asked to reproduce stories taken from the folklore of other cultures; thus, their content and structure were rather strange to Western ears. The reproductions showed many changes from the original. Some parts were subtracted, others were overelaborated, and still others were additions that were completely new. In effects, the participants had built a new story upon the memorial ruins of the original. This memorial reconstruction was generally more in line with the cultural conceptions of the subjects than with the story they had actually heard. For example, certain supernatural plot elements were interpreted along more familiar lines.

In another experiment, 45 participants were randomly assigned to watch different videos of a car accident, in which separate videos had shown collisions at 20 miles per hour, 30 miles per hour, and 40 miles per hour. Afterwards, participants filled out a survey. The survey asked the question, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" The question always asked the same thing, except the verb used to describe the collision varied. Rather than "smashed", other verbs used included "bumped", "collided", "hit", or "contacted". Participants estimated collisions of all speeds to average between 35 miles per hour to just below 40 miles per hour. If actual speed were the main factor in estimate, it could be assumed that participants would have lower estimates for lower speed collisions. Instead, the word being used to describe the collision seemed to better predict the estimate in speed rather than the speed itself.

The second experiment also showed participants videos of a car accident, but the critical manipulation was the verbiage of the follow-up questionnaire. 150 participants were randomly assigned to three conditions. Those in the first condition were asked the same question as the first study using the verb "smashed". The second group was asked the same question as the first study, replacing "smashed" with "hit". The final group was not asked about the speed of the crashed cars. The researchers then asked the participants if they had seen any broken glass, knowing that there was no broken glass in the video. The responses to this question had shown that the difference between whether broken glass was recalled or not heavily depended on the verb used. A larger sum of participants in the "smashed" group declared that there was broken glass.

In this study, the first point brought up in discussion is that the words used to phrase a question can heavily influence the response given. Second, the study indicates that the phrasing of a question can give expectations to previously ignored details, and therefore, a misconstruction of our memory recall. This indication supports false memory as an existing phenomenon. After that lot of experiments have been conducted on memory distortion (false memory) and it has been proved that we keep reconstructing false memories in our head.

Mind reconstruct which type of false memories and insert in between already stored partial memories depends upon following factors

-          Your existing beliefs

-          Similar events

-          Overconfidence

-          Emotions

-          External Influence (Misinformation)

Preexisting beliefs and expectations plays important role in memory distortion. Suppose someday you visited a Police Station, It was your first time when you visited police station but in the movies you have seen it lot of time. So after some time if someone asks you to describe that Police Station, you will probably describe some of the things that you have not seen there, that you probably saw in movies but you mixed those memories with your actual visit memories and reconstructed new memories. In the same way suppose you attended a wedding event and after back to back you attended two more wedding events and after some time if will be difficult for you to distinguish details of all event and you will end up mixing the details. Emotions and ego are the biggest influencers to mind to cheat you. Suppose you spent pleasant time with someone but your relationship ended at bad note then you will remember only negative traits of that person and you will believe that that person was bad from the begging on the basis of end point you will calibrate all of your previous memories. So if the last impression was bad your mind will delete the good trait of that person and will remember only bad traits of that person and will reconstruct some false memories too and opposite will happen if last impression was good. That’s why earlier in the article I mentioned that our memories are dynamic and not static. We change our past memories on the basis of our last available impression. This phenomenon is called Memory Calibration. Memories can also be recreated by some external information, even on the basis of wrong information.

The Last Impression

Emotions and misinformation by other persons are the most important factors in memory distortion. We don’t perceive the past as it was, we perceive it as our mind wants us to perceive it and that’s why last impression is very important and on the basis on last impression we change our all previous memories. Suppose you spent some time with your roommate. The time was not pleasant and most of the time you hurt him now you both are going to separate in next 2 days. In last 2 days you showed too much love to him and separated at happy note. You won’t believe it but the memories related to you in the brain of your roommate will completely change and he would start to believe that actually you were good person and always tried to care him. This is the magic of last impression and you can exploit it by understanding human weakness of memory distortion and if this is not enough then you will be surprised to know that you can easily plant false memories in someone’s mind. An Indian film Drishyam is based on this theme where a murderer cleverly plant false memories in the mind of some persons and use them as eye witness and able to save himself from police. False memories can be planted by providing some misinformation like you tell your partner that you were wearing red color t-shirt when you met her first time but actually you was wearing black color t-shirt. Another way to plant false memory is the way you ask the question. Suppose in place of asking to your friend about the color of your t-shirt when you met to first time, you ask him – “tell me weather I was wearing red t-shirt or blue t-shirt when you met me first time”. This is more effective method to plant the false memories.

Dale, Loftus, and Rathbun performed an experiment when a witness is questioned they are more likely to provide false information on unusual details. For example, they put a teacher in the room who was wearing a hat and let him talk for 5 minutes. When he left the room 27 kids were questioned and asked "In which hand did the teacher hold his hat?" 17 students replied right, 7 replied left, and only 3 said the correct answer that he was wearing it.

The Solution

So till now you must have believed that we don’t know correctly even about past. There is a mischievous virus in our head and that virus is our mind that keep distorting memories, reconstructing old memories as it fits to current situation and gives you completely false perception of past. So if you have any complaint, bad feeling about your past then you can let free to your past from all charges by giving benefit of doubt because there is possibility that you had fantastic past and your current bad perception its recreation of your mind.

We do not see past as it was. We see it as we want to see it today.

But what is the solution of this?

Is there any way by which we can save ourselves from this weakness of human memory?

Yes there is

A very simple one

Write the daily diary.

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