Have you ever been sure that you started the washing machine before work only to arrive home and find out that you didn’t? This is an example of a false memory. False memories are a recollection that you have of an experience or event in your life that is either not entirely true or never happened to begin with. False memories often feel like real events and may become clearer as they are fixated upon because the brain wants the memory to be true. These memories happen at all ages and with all different types of events.
My mother-in-law grew up in Detroit, Michigan in a huge three-story house with a lovely backyard for lots of room for activity, or so she thought. She only lived in the house until she was around twelve years old, but she remembered it so clearly as the luxurious house in Detroit all the way into adulthood. She used to tell people stories about the plenty of rooms that were spread out across the home, and the extra-large basement that was full of activities. These stories she would tell led her to wanting to go back and see the home again after a decade or so of not living there.
Upon arrival at her beautiful three-story childhood home, her whole childhood seemed to be something that she no longer knew. She thought that she may be at the wrong address, or even that the home was torn down and replaced. Her mother, who was with her at the time of the visit to the past, walked her through the way the home was really set up. My mother-in-law was taken aback after realizing that all the stories she spoke of and the memories she recalled were completely made up inside of her head. She was so sure that the house was exactly as she imagined it but was proven to be wrong and started to recall what her home was truly like during the visit.
After the visit to her true childhood home, she realized that there were so many other things about her childhood that she had fabricated inside her head without even realizing it. She had memories of a neighbor who had an affair that turned out to be false. She remembered her grandmother having a lovely boyfriend who she was going to marry, he turned out to have a wife the entire time he was with her grandmother. Even to this day, she continues to have these false memories but with things that are not as imaginary as they were as a child.
False memories are so very common that most people often might never even realize that they were ever even falsified. False memories can be as little as believing you turned off the oven and finding out you forgot to, and they can be as big as the memory of your childhood home being entirely different then you have remembered your entire life. False memories may not always be entirely false, but when they are it can surely be frustrating or confusing for people. False memories can happen at any age or time in someone’s life, but they are completely normal and nothing to be worried about.
Hi Emma!
I really enjoyed your story about your mother-in-law. I have also had experiences where my memory proved to be false or partly incorrect, but I don’t think it has ever been to the extent where I completely made up an experience. I find it fascinating that she remembered her childhood home to be completely different than it actually way. I wonder where she got the basis for her memory from. Maybe it was based off of someone else’s home, or maybe it was a home that she always dreamed of having herself? Your post also made me wonder how many of my memories could be entirely made up without me realizing it. As I have gotten older, I have noticed where some of my memories aren’t entirely true, but I haven’t come to the conclusion (yet) that any of my memories are entirely false. I’m sure there are memories that I have entirely made up, however, and I’m interested to see when the truth finally comes out! Its crazy how much our minds can do!
Your mother-in-law’s childhood memories are a great example of the constructive nature of memory. The characteristics of her false memories reflect the constructive nature of memory because while they are based on something real that happened, like the existence of the house or the neighbor, they are based on experiences, knowledge, and expectations (Goldstein, 2015). It sounds like your mother-in-law’s mind constructed memories are based on a great deal of expectation. She expected the house to be a grand, idyllic home. She also expected the neighbor to have an affair and her grandmother to have a happy relationship. These expectations shaped how her mind remembers each of these memories, despite their being false.
In addition to expectation, she also used knowledge to shape her memories. The schema or her knowledge about aspects of the environment (Goldstein, 2015), her mind created of her childhood home did not match up with reality but was based on the knowledge of the actual house. The knowledge of her grandmother’s boyfriend was used to create a false narrative of happiness, and the knowledge of her neighbor created the affair memory. We might not know for sure, but experiences with each of these people and things could also have helped to shape her false memories. Maybe the neighbor was mean to her. Perhaps her grandmother never seemed unhappy. Maybe, to a child, the home did look like a luxurious mansion. It is also possible that due to her being a child, she didn’t have enough information to form entirely accurate memories, so through construction, her mind filled in the blanks with fanciful details. Filling in the blanks happens when information is incomplete (Goldstein, 2015). It can be helpful but results in errors at times, as evidenced by your mother-in-law. The constructive nature of memory allows our minds to use each of our experiences, knowledge, and expectations to shape memories, sometimes in ways that don’t line up with reality.
Works Cited
Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Cengage Learning.
The false memory generated by the blogger’s mother-in-law is not uncommon in our life. Sometimes it has nothing to do with how long it happened and age. Each of us may have it, but we don’t realize it. False memory is an automatic combination of brain memory information, resulting in untrue memories. Everyone’s brain can produce false memories or distort the real situation of things. People will firmly believe their memories and even believe the lies made up by their brains. This is not pathogenesis. All people have false memories, especially about the scenes they experienced in childhood. Some people are very sure of what has not happened. Scientists believe that false memory is caused by increased activity in some areas of the brain responsible for processing memory. With the growth of people’s age, the speed of forgetting the actual content of what happened is much faster than the memory of the general impression of things. Cabessa said that the special memory of the past will not remain unchanged forever. What he left, in the end, is only a general impression rather than special details. Then, our brains use this mechanism to fill the loopholes in our real memory. Therefore, when we recall childhood or some things that are not so impressive, some details we think of maybe false memories.
Reference：
Otgaar, H., Muris, P., Howe, M. L., & Merckelbach, H. (2017, November). What drives false memories in psychopathology? A case for associative activation. Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5665161/.
False memories make a person believe they did a task but in reality, they did not. (False Memories, Psu.) They feel confident about the memory, but in their mind, they distorted the memory. (False Memories, Very well mind.) I can see your mother-in-law distorted the memories from her childhood house. She thought she had a big house with a bunch of rooms, but it was not true. Everyone experiences false memory sometime in their lives by recalling a memory that did not happen. (False Memories, Very well Mind.) She remembered her grandmother being happy with her boyfriend but in reality, her grandmother was being cheated on. False memories happen because of misinformation and also because that memory is changed over time. (The Power Of Suggestion.) Time makes a memory fade away and we replace it with different information that makes the memory false. (The Influence of Time.) So with your mother in law, it is normal for her to have false memories because it happens to everyone.
Cite sourced: Cherry, K. (2020, August 1). How your brain can create false memories. Verywell Mind. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-false-memory-2795193.