Human memory appears to be terribly flawed. We forget. We misremember. We construct entirely fabricated memories for events that did not happen. However, as psychologists who research memory, we argue that these imperfections can often be very useful and functional. Human memory is thus perfectly imperfect – and some of its apparent flaws may in fact be features.
Decades of cognitive psychology research has conclusively demonstrated that, despite how it may feel inside your head, human memory does not work like a video camera. We do not ‘record’ events as if saving a file on a computer, to be reopened and viewed at will. In fact, our memories are reconstructed every time we recall them, leaving them open to change. These changes can, of course, have significant negative outcomes, such as arguments with a spouse or a friend about who said what. In a forensic context, eyewitnesses are prone to misremembering what they saw at a scene or misidentifying an innocent person as the guilty party. Individuals have even been shown to provide confessions based on false memories of committing a crime, both in the lab and in real-world cases. Because misremembering can have such significant consequences, flexible memories tend to be framed as a weakness of the human condition.
However, in many other contexts, imperfect memories confer substantial benefits. Though it may sound paradoxical, forgetting is an important part of learning: you forget the unimportant in order to focus on retaining crucial information. In fact, the ability to extract the ‘gist’ from your memory of many similar events, while forgetting the individual details, is essential to the ability to learn important lessons and avoid repeating mistakes.
Our imperfect memories also have social benefits. Humans are social animals, and maintaining strong networks is essential for survival and happiness. You might be forgiven for thinking that flaws in memory can only hurt your relationships, especially if you have ever forgotten a partner’s birthday. This isn’t always the case, though. Flawed recall can actually improve social experiences and connections, as three everyday examples will show. After learning about them, you might agree with Jane Austen that, in the context of social relationships, ‘a good memory is unpardonable.’
We selectively forget rejection and criticism
It is well established that people tend to selectively forget negative experiences. Actually, people not only tend to forget unpleasant events faster than pleasant ones, but misremember the past as being better than it really was – suggesting that some forms of forgetting might make us happier.
In a social context, forgetting can help to bolster your self-image and soothe the pain of negative feedback. In one study providing evidence for this, participants were presented with a description of a person that included both positive and negative traits (eg ‘they are honest, but boring’). Each participant was told either that this was a summary of how others described them, or that it summarised how someone else (‘Chris’) was described. A little while later, participants were asked to recall as much of the description as they could. They were less likely to remember the negative adjectives from the list – but only when they themselves had been described (they more easily recalled negative aspects of Chris’s character). This kind of tendency could be self-protective, ultimately helping people maintain a more positive self-image, and thus supporting social engagement in future.
Older adults tend to be more positively biased in their recollections than younger adults
In a clever follow-up study, researchers found that when the negative traits attributed to participants were presented as easy to change (eg, ‘anyone can become less boring almost instantly’), they were recalled at about the same rate as positive traits. However, when they were presented as fixed traits, participants were more likely to forget hearing about them. This suggests that when peers offer critical feedback that someone can do nothing about, it’s more likely to be forgotten. So, you might forget the time your friend told you that your eyes are too close together (since you can’t change that), but remember someone telling you that you speak too quickly, and strive to correct it. In this instance, and in others, forgetting what is painful could be adaptive.
People do differ in their ability or tendency to selectively remember the past. For example, those who report higher self-esteem tend to recall more positive events from their past than those with lower self-esteem. In contrast, individuals with depression are particularly likely to recall negative memories. There is also a general tendency for older adults to be more positively biased in their recollections than younger adults, and this may contribute to the tendency for older people to report greater wellbeing.
Taken together, these findings show how malleable memories might support mental health by sanding off the rough edges of past interactions. This doesn’t mean that people forget every unpleasant experience that has happened to them but, on the whole, many of us have a bias toward a rosy interpretation of the past.
We misremember our own social behaviours
Just as people seem to selectively forget times when others are uncharitable, there’s evidence that we tend to misremember when we’ve behaved poorly ourselves. In one study, each participant was anonymously paired with someone else for an experimental game, and was given the role of the ‘dictator’. The dictator was responsible for deciding how to divide a pot of money. They had the power to behave cooperatively (split the money fairly with their partner) or selfishly (take more money for themselves). Later in the experiment, participants were given a surprise memory test and were asked to recall how they had split the money. They had no incentive to lie at this point; they were even promised an additional reward for recalling their decision accurately. Despite this, participants recalled, on average, that they were more generous than they had actually been. This effect was particularly evident among those who felt that selfishness was not part of who they were or wanted to be.
This study and others like it suggest that people misremember their own actions in order to preserve their sense of self and, ultimately, to maintain happiness. We all have moments in our lives when we behave in a way that doesn’t fit with our values or self-perception. A mild example would be losing your patience with a learner driver because they’re driving slowly and you’re in a hurry: you know that it’s not their fault but, in the moment, you grow frustrated and might drive close behind them or even beep at them to hurry up. Research suggests that moments like this are prime candidates for being forgotten or misremembered, sacrificing perfectly accurate recall to spare your sense of self.
We remember in ways that support relationships
There is a saying that ‘the key to a long marriage is a short memory.’ And, in fact, research supports the idea that misremembering the past may improve marital satisfaction. In contrast to the general tendency to misremember the past as being better than it really was, studies of marriage have suggested that misremembering the past as less good than it really was might confer benefits in a relationship. In a 20-year study of marital satisfaction, wives were surveyed at multiple time points about both their current relationship satisfaction and how satisfied they remembered being in the past. The findings showed that these wives systematically misremembered their prior ratings – remembering their previous satisfaction as lower than it really had been at the time. These inaccurate memories of the past likely created a perception that their relationship was on an upward trajectory, getting better all the time. This illusion of improvement was replicated in a study of newlyweds who were surveyed every six months in the early years of their marriage.
You might no longer notice your partner’s positive traits as much because you’re used to them
There is even evidence that this misremembering can be functional: the degree to which participants in the 20-year study underestimated their prior relationship satisfaction significantly predicted their happiness a decade later. The authors of this study noted that, though memory may not serve as an accurate record of a relationship’s history, it may nevertheless play a role in the maintenance of commitment over long periods of time.
An illusion of improvement could be a nifty means of staving off so-called ‘habituation effects’, where couples grow insensitive to the continuing positive qualities in a relationship. In other words, as a relationship goes on, you might no longer notice your partner’s positive traits as much (‘he always listens to me when I’ve had a bad day’) because you’re used to them, while simultaneously being more attuned to negative changes (‘he used to wake me up with a cup of tea, but he doesn’t do that any more’). A tendency to recall that, on the whole, you are more satisfied with your relationship now than you were last year might counteract this effect, even if it isn’t really true.
We propose that our flexible, fallible memories evolved as they did for good reasons, and the maintenance of social bonds may be one of those reasons. While the misremembering processes occur naturally and without conscious awareness, it is possible to engage in these practices intentionally. Many wellbeing interventions in the field of positive psychology are focused on reframing the past and choosing to focus on the good things in life (for instance, by reflecting or writing about positive elements of one’s past experiences).
At the same time, it might be helpful to remain aware of the tendency to forget and misremember the past, so that we can supplement our memories with external aids if needed. Knowing how distorted a memory can be might motivate you to record contemporaneous evidence of your experience that you can consult later. For example, keeping a diary of your mood or relationship satisfaction might be useful if you’re trying to come to a decision about a major life change like leaving a job or ending a relationship.
People tend to think of forgetting and misremembering strictly as weaknesses – as the reason for lost car keys or the inability to recall someone’s name when you bump into them; as a sign of neurological illness; or the cause of miscarriages of justice. However, everyday forgetting and misremembering are also normal, useful parts of how memory works – and they may be key to managing well in a highly social world.
