False Memories: Did You Really Dance in the Rain at Woodstock or Merely Imagine It?

We all have memories of past events, whether those events occurred just yesterday or years ago. Is it possible, however, that what we remember did transpire exactly as we recall, or that it did not actually occur at all?

Studies have shown that many of our memories of past events are actually "false" memories that have either been altered and/or elaborated upon or never really occurred at all. In other words, we just think those events transpired.

In an article for USA TODAY, Sharon Jayson relates, “Psychological research has shown various ways ‘false memories’ are created, such as through the power of suggestion or through vivid imagination” (para. 1). Moreover, she adds that recent studies demonstrated that when individuals view a video of someone completing a simple task, when asked about it two weeks later, they don’t remember viewing the video and think they themselves completed the task.

What’s more, according to psychologist Daniel Schacter of Harvard University, when people see something on television, they think it actually happened. Moreover, Schacter says, when people simply imagine themselves doing something, it can result in the creation of a false memory. (Jayson, 2010)

How False Memories Are Created

People apparently believe false memories are real, according to the American Psychological Association (2000), because the brain “pulls together perceptual information from unrelated experiences and wrongly reads it as a single, authentic memory” (para. 2). Also, the more perception information people have about a particular event, including taste, touch, sight, and sound, the greater the likelihood that they will actually believe the experience was real, although it was instead false. 

As per the Association, the “‘source monitoring’ theory of false memories postulates that people misattribute perceptual information experienced in a different context to support a memory for something that never happened” (para. 2).  Moreover, also according to the APA, 

The more perceptual information people can connect to the false memory, the more likely they are to have that false memory in the first place, the study finds. In particular, Linda Henkel, PhD, and her colleagues find that study participants were more likely to falsely remember seeing an object if they previously imagined the object and heard the sound it makes. (para. 3)

 The Rashomon Effect

Relatedly, the Akira Kurosawa movie, Rashomon, tells the story of a crime and how it’s viewed and related from different perspectives by different people. In fact, the term "The Rashomon Effect," which was coined after the release of the film, refers to how subjectivity influences perception so that several people can witness the same event unfold and each person will then offer a different but equally believable account of what he or she witnessed. 

The reality, though, is that too many perspectives can sometimes distort what actually occurred, making it difficult to ascertain the "truth" of the matter, and the question that naturally arises is whether or not it’s possible to get a true account of any event, especially in light of the Rashomon Effect, coupled with the fact that many of one’s memories are false recollections of events that may not have actually occurred at all.

In summary, not only do such studies give us reason to examine our recollections of the past, whether yesterday or years ago, they also perhaps help explain why siblings growing up in the same household and sharing many of the same experiences often recall those shared experiences quite differently. They are each recalling events from their own perspectives, each imagining certain aspects of those events, and each elaborating upon what they believe occurred. However, the accuracy of what each sibling recalls is open to debate.

Sources:

American Psychological Association (2000) New Theory on the Making of a False Memory. March 2000, Vol 31, No. 3, p. 12. Retrieved fromhttp://www.apa.org/monitor/mar00/memory.aspx

Jayson, S. (2010) “Did You Lock the Door or Just Imagine It?” USA TODAY, September 15, 2010, retrieved fromhttp://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/mentalhealth/2010-09-15-falsememories15_ST_N.htm

Smoking Marijuana Increases Creativity---Maybe, Maybe Not

Smoking marijuana, aka Mary Jane, pot, or weed, can free your creative muse and enable you to produce a veritable masterpiece of art, music, or literature. Or can it? Being a former flower child of the 60's Revolution and someone who smoked her share of Mary Jane (Yes, I inhaled), I have often argued that a toke or two or three can indeed make you more creative. However, after conducting some research while compiling my book Color You Creative (available on Amazon Books), I have had to reconsider that argument. 

For starters, Jason Silva, of the Huffington Post (2011), relates that Jonah Lehrer, in his posts for Science Blogs, discusses the relationship between creativity and smoking marijuana, citing a paper published in Psychiatry Research, which “sheds some light on why smoking weed seems to unleash a stream of loose associations,” resulting in increased creativity (para. 11). Apparently, according to Lehrer, creativity increases because “smoking marijuana contributes to “a phenomenon called ‘semantic priming’” (Silva, 2011, para.11).

What exactly is semantic priming? According to Lehrer, “The activation of one word allows us to react more quickly to related words;” and, interestingly, “marijuana seems to induce a state of hyper-priming, in which the reach of semantic priming extends outwards to distantly related concepts” Silva, 2011, para. 12).

In other words, smoking marijuana, according to researcher Vaughan Bell, as cited by Lehrer, causes one to experience “freewheeling thoughts,” and in the study, “volunteers who were under the influence of cannabis showed a definite "hyper-priming" tendency, where distant concepts were reacted to more quickly” (Silva, 2011, para. 13).

As Silva relates (2011),

·    "Essentially, marijuana can extend the range of our free-associative capacities. It increases the novel ways in which we find connections between ideas, and it also extends the range of ideas that we might somehow relate to one another.

While not surprising, it does offer a scientific validation for what so many artists, philosophers and scientists have been saying for ages: that marijuana is a cognitive catalyst that can trigger heightened free-associative creativity, increased pattern recognition, and insight." (Para. 14-15)

On the other hand, various other studies have proposed a link between creativity and alcohol and/or drug usage, arguing that substances such as drugs and alcohol can contribute to or even cause creativity. After all, when one is under the influence of such substances, one is usually less inhibited and, therefore, less reserved about demonstrating one’s creative impulses. (Dacey & Lennon, 1998)

In conclusion, although some theorists argue there is often a correlation between addictive behavior and creativity, studies have not supported that argument. Therefore, one might very well conclude that whereas marijuana, like alcohol and drugs, can very well act as a catalyst for creativity, since it “frees” one’s thoughts and lessens one’s inhibitions, the product itself does not actually cause one to be any more or, for that matter, less creative than one naturally is. 

Dacey, J., Lennon, K. (1998) Understanding creativity: The interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Silva, J. (2011) On creativity, marijuana and "a butterfly effect in thought". Retrieved from  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-silva/on-creativity-marijuana-a_b_900701.html

 

The Joys of Going Barefoot

Did you go barefoot as a child? If not, you were probably a kid who lived in town and came from an at least relatively comfortable background, meaning your family had an indoor toilet, and you never picked potato bugs off your daddy’s potato plants for a penny a piece). My family, however, was poor, and we lived in the country, or as city people called it, "the sticks." So when we were little, my brother, sister, and I looked forward to the first day of May because that was when Mama would let us kick off our shoes and run barefoot through the grass and dirt, as well as over rocks and occasional pine cones or hickory nuts, not to mention chicken droppings. Of course, being poor country children, our pleasures were simple.  

In case you’re wondering why we had to wait until the first day of May, it was because Mama said that if we went barefoot any sooner, we would come down with some incurable disease that would rot us from the inside out.

Not that you had to be poor or live in the country to go barefoot, but I don't think the kids from the more affluent families in my hometown, who tended to live within the city limits of Fairburn, looked forward to "Barefoot Day" with the same gusto as my siblings and I. That is, if those kids even went barefoot, which I doubt, given the streets in town were paved; and during the summer months in the Deep South, asphalt gets so hot you can literally fry eggs on it, not to mention a slab of bacon and still have heat enough left over to brown a dozen biscuits.  

And what exactly is my point? Well, it's that going barefoot is good for you. One, it's good for you psychologically because it makes you feel free and unencumbered. In other words, it makes you feel lighter emotionally. (It also makes you lighter physically since shoes usually weigh from one to two or more pounds, depending upon the style.) Moreover, as you get older, going barefoot can help you get back in touch with your inner child, the part of you that dares to be true to himself or herself and doesn't give a rat's behind  what other people think.   

In addition, although there's no scientific data to support this theory, going barefoot makes you more creative. In fact, I would argue that the more creative a person is, the more often he or she goes barefoot. Hmm, I wonder if a study would support this hypothesis. Maybe I should undertake such a study, and if I'm proven right, the findings might very well be published in some prestigious journal, after which I'll have my fifteen minutes of fame. Nah, I don't enjoy writing scholarly articles. They require too much research and the editors want to split hairs over every other word. I much prefer writing my blog because, hey, it's my blog and I don't have to support my arguments with research. 

Speaking of research, though, apparently going barefoot might also have its drawbacks. For one, it will make you more likely to contact malaria or some other tropical fever. According to an article by Maria Cheng, AP medical writer, in The Advocate (our local newspaper), ". . . scientists say there might be a potent new tool to fight the deadly mosquito-borne disease [malaria]: the stench of human feet" (p. 3A). Yep, it seems mosquitoes that carry malaria are "three times more likely to be drawn to stinky stockings" than non-stinky stockings (p. 3A). Consequently, scientists are considering developing traps that smell like stinky feet to target malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Moreover, according to Cheng, ". . . the same strategy might be used to target insects that carry other diseases such as dengue and Japanese encephalitis" (p. 3A).

So, with the findings of this scientific study in mind, maybe I need to rethink my argument that going barefoot is good for you. Give me a minute. Okay, I rethought it, and I still think I’m right. Why? Well, if for no other reason than going barefoot makes you a few pounds lighter and stepping on pine cones can count as an aerobic activity. How’s that? (Don’t blame me. My muse just deserted me.).

 Source: Cheng, M. (2013) Stinky Feet May Lead to Anti-malaria Weapon. Baton Rouge, LA: The Advocate, p. 3A