By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

False Memories.

What we remember about things others say can depend on our mood.

Two men go out to dinner with their dates. Let’s call them Bob and Sam. Bob goes home sure that his date did not like him. Sam is sure his date did. The two women said exactly the same things to their dates. Why the difference?

This happens a lot. You swear you didn’t say something, your partner swears you did. Neither of you may be lying but one of you has got this conversation wrong. Why?

One cause of memory failures is false memories. They happen more often than most of us realize and they cause a lot of relationship problems. Those memories are easier to create than you might think.

Researchers have sophisticated ways of testing for false memories and the way they are created or perpetuated. In pasts posts, we talked about how drugs and alcohol can increase false memories, but your personality and that of your partner are also factors. False memories are dependent on your mood at the time you hear things. They are also affected by your normal personality and way of perceiving the world.

Info about false memories and why they occur in relationships.

A test for false memories would consist of asking you to remember a list of words. Say the list included, night, bed, pillow, nap, etc. The next time you see the researcher you read a list of words and are asked to mark which you saw the first time.

This time included in the list is a word that was not there the first time but would have fit with the category that made up that list. In this case, the missing word might have been sleep. So if you picked sleep it made sense, but in fact, the word was not there the first time. If you said that you remembered it this would be a false memory.

In our date example, we find that in both cases the woman told their date that they had an interesting tie. Bob the perennial pessimist is sure his date said he had an awful tie. Sam remembers his date as saying he had a nice tie. Sam is an optimist.

The mood, as well as the basic personality of these two men, causes them to hear the same information but they both remember things that the date did not say. What they are remembering is a form of false memory in which their mind has filled in the words needed to make sense of the comment “interesting tie.”

One way to check this out in the lab would be to leave the word “sleep” out of the retest. This time if we added two words to the list, say insomnia and restful, we could see if there was a difference in the way two people would remember that list.

Sure enough, pessimists will remember insomnia and swear it was on the first list and optimists will remember the word rest. Both are making errors in their memory. Neither is lying but they both are sure they remember things that did not happen because they learned the list of words as a category, not as a list. Then when they are retested they fill in another word that fits their version of what the category is about.

So consider that some of the things you and those around you swear were said or happen may, in fact, be false memories. How sure are you that you actually heard the things you think you heard?

Sometimes for the sake of relationships and our long-term sanity, it pays to check out with the other person what they really said or meant. That way our minds do not need to fill in missing information and there are fewer chances to create these troublesome false memories in the first place.

What is the chance that memory you are arguing about is a false memory?

• Drugs increase false memories (counselorssoapbox.com)
• What is confabulation? Relationship to false memories and Wernicke-Korsakoff’s syndrome (counselorssoapbox.com)

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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