A middle-aged lawyer cherished a vivid boyhood memory of his father comforting him while his mother was in the hospital giving birth to a younger brother, says Martin Conway, head of the psychology department at City University London. The lawyer recalled his father distracting and entertaining him by talking about the landing of a man on the moon. He saw it as a sign that even with a baby brother on the way, his dad still loved and valued him, Dr. Conway says.
Only decades later did the attorney see that his recollection had to be wrong: His brother was born in 1968, a year before the first moon landing, says Dr. Conway, author of more than 150 studies on memory. “I’ve had this cherished memory for 30 years that I thought was true, but as I listened I suddenly realized it couldn’t be,” the attorney told Dr. Conway.
He had probably patched together details from separate events to form a single memory, Dr. Conway says. The memory was on-target in a deeper sense: “The fact that he was still loved was a truth to him, an important truth,” shoring up his sense of identity, Dr. Conway says. “It’s not so important that a memory be accurate. It’s more important that it helps us define ourselves.”
Dr. Conway’s work builds on a shift in psychologists’ understanding of long-term memories about our lives, or autobiographical memory. A growing number of researchers say memories are not just a storehouse for facts but also a creative blend of fact and fiction that helps people tell meaningful stories about their lives, set goals and envision the future in a realistic way.
It is commonly believed that storing a memory is like making a video, but long-term memories are never literal replays. They’re mental constructions of facts, inferences and imagined details that people patch together after the fact.
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