Sowing False Memories

A story about the pain false memories create.

I was reading about a recent study where students where shown two types of commercials: one lame one and one with fabulous imagery (think a long, elaborate soft drink or beer ad with horses).  An hour or two later the students were divided into two groups: one that actually sampled the product and one that did not.

It turns out that those who saw the fabulous imagery commercial were just as likely to report using the product as those who actually used the product.

This study (reference here and related article here) leads to some very disturbing results at two levels.

At the first level it points out how what we actually remember is different than what happened.  For most people memories are not like photographs that do not change.  Instead they are like a box of items.  You want to remember something, you pick up the box, say "Mom's Last Birthday", and dump it out on the desk - so you see the cake, the cards, and so on. 

But wait!

There were other birthday things dumped out on the desk as well.  So when we move on to thinking about something else and we pick the things back up to put them into the box we forget some and we mix in others that were already on the desk.

Thus the memory of "Mom's Last Birthday" evolve over time to include other parts of our memories.

This study demonstrates concretely that memories are in fact totally fallible and can exist without the actual events ever occurring (not that this is new).   More importantly, these "false memories" can occur as a result of a single, well crafted commercial.  Apparently the commercials target "common items" in everyone's "box of memories", bucolic horse or farm landscapes, football games, and so forth.  In with this mix are sprinkled just a few false facts - you drank that drink, you eat that snack food.  Later on, when you go back through the "box of memories" you basically don't notice these few false items - I suppose because they are so well mixed into the real ones that you just don't realize it and that your memory system is always a little "fuzzy" to begin with.

I suppose this also explains deja vu to a degree.  You go somewhere that looks like somewhere else - at least mostly - and if your memory of the previous place is faded just enough you feel like the new place is the old place.

The second level of this is even more troubling.

(Consider this too against the big "rage" in the 1990's of false abuse "memories" - particularly stories like the McMartin Preschool Trial - where all the initial horrendous allegations turned out to all be made up.  In cases like this the "false memories" rose up out specific situations affecting only a small number of individuals in a specific setting.  This study I describe points out that this effect is occurring in each and every person watching ads, whether on TV, video, the internet, cell phones every minute of every day.)

First of all, I suspect that today's students as described in the study are far more susceptible to this than old geezers.  I watch virtually zero ads these days - with DVR's, site blocking, and other effects few ads get my attention.  I can also tell the difference between something I have done and something I have not because I have spent many years in a "low BS" mode - actually profiting from others who are less able to discern reality from nonsense.

Today's young people, I think, have been exposed to these ads (and hence their associated "false reality") for their entire lives and there is much less of a requirement that they operate in a "concrete reality" than me.  For example, political correctness demands that thoughts telling you that you are living in "Animal Farm" must be swept away because, if the truth were properly examined, others might "feel bad" and your reality would not match "the narrative".

And what does this do to a young mind?  It creates a "false reality" where consequences and actions are totally unrelated.  Hipocrisy (interesting that old blogger here thinks that "hipocrisy" is always misspelled - it can't be just a coincidence) cannot be detected - they do not see that doing both A and not doing A is inconsistent.

I myself have noticed this often.  Those under thirty or so simply accept simultaneously conflicting realities without question.  And we're not talking about "big picture" issues, e.g., science or God.  Instead we see all sorts of asymmetric thinking - group #1 is good because it does A, group #2, also doing A, is bad because of who or what is in it.  "Hate crimes" versus "crimes" - why are serial killers guilty of "hate crimes"?  Making things "equal" by "dumbing down" some aspect of things - are they really still equal?

Without the ability to accurately discern concrete reality from some false reality injected into their minds by outside forces how can young minds be making good decisions?

How does this color their relationships?  Personally I see how this type of thinking enables all sorts of excuses for bad and even troubling behavior on the part of one spouse.  Can you have a good relationship with someone when your mind automatically sweeps conflicting input about the other person under the rug?

And how about children?  Children are notorious for discerning inconsistent behavior on the part of adults.  What do they see in this?

What do political campaigns become?  Battles to get people to falsely believe as opposed to battles over truth?

No, sadly I think this study is perhaps one of the most damning assessments of modern thinking I have ever seen.  If a single ad can create a false reality in a college student's mind what does a lifetime of it do?

For me I see the false reality every day, growing by leaps and bounds, totally unchecked and integrated into societies very fabric.  The false realities are not created by a single "big brother" but instead by a collective "big brother" synthesized out of the wants and desires of business men, activities, Hollywood types, factions and special interests.

Like a black hole emitting Hawking radiation the "false reality" is spewed into the minds of the weak drawing them further and further away from what is concretely real into the warm, fuzzy, false memory-based reality of the black hole.

One of the things my father taught me was that "advertising was evil".  He was born in 1930 at a time when the only reality was one of struggle.  I always believed this but I never really knew why.  Certainly advertising was designed to appeal to vanity but was it evil? 

Now I know why for certain that it is...

(And imagine, every single aspect of modern society is about ads - they are even on this very blog.)