Our memory is perceived by us as a database in our heads that can never go wrong.
New evidence paints a different picture, and our memory may not be as consistent or even as true as believed.

Memory: The Hard Disk Of The Mind

In the game Chinese Whispers, where a certain message is passed on from person to person, it is almost always proved that the final message is completely different from the original.
The same ‘chain’ effect is happening in our memories, where certain tiny details may not be what were true, but what we wish were true, or perceived to be true.

The Game 'Chinese Whispers'

Storytellers form a different memory of a story they are reciting, due to mutation in how differently it is told to audiences each time, and how much of an artistic licence is used to change certain details of the story.
Over time the changed or mutated story seems like the original one in the storyteller's mind, something known as the Audience-Tuning Effect.

The Audience-Tuning Effect

Social experiments show that people in general are stubborn about the accuracy of their memories, which may have mutated or even changed beyond recognition.
So many tiny, false details have been added to the original memory over time, that one theory says that the mere act of recalling a certain memory takes it out of the ‘freezer’ and puts it back, changing its shape and form a bit.
The result is that it is highly unlikely that our treasured memories are completely accurate.

Memories Are Malleable

<header dir="ltr">
 <time datetime="2018-12-17T10:49:18Z" itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-12-17T10:49:18Z" dir="ltr">December 17, 2018 5.49am EST</time>
 </header><h3>Disclosure statement</h3>Robert Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<div>We believe in the free flow of information</div><h6>Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.</h6><div><button tabindex="0" type="button">Republish this article</button></div><figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250919/original/file-20181217-185258-1gc7soo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=926&amp;fit=clip"><figcaption dir="ltr">
 Tiny mistakes can appear in our memories every time we recall past events.
 <a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-head-erased-by-pencil-eraser-1015037953?src=EnukGUS8iTS2LSW7lGH6dg-4-44" dir="ltr">Quick Shot/ Shutterstock</a>
 </figcaption></figure>Your memory probably isn’t as good as you think it is. We rely on our memories not only for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938207" dir="ltr">sharing stories</a> with friends or learning from our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938208" dir="ltr">past experiences</a>, but we also use it for crucial things like creating a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938210" dir="ltr">sense of personal identity</a>. Yet evidence shows that our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2013.866683" dir="ltr">memory isn’t as consistent</a> as we’d like to believe. What’s worse, we’re often guilty of changing the facts and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-false-memories-49454" dir="ltr">adding false details</a> to our memories without even realising. To understand a bit about how remembering works, consider the <a href="https://icebreakerideas.com/telephone-game/" dir="ltr">“telephone game”</a> (also known as “Chinese whispers”). In the game, one person quietly whispers a message to the person beside them, who then passes it on to the next person in line, and so on. Each time the message is relayed, some parts might be misheard or misunderstood, others might get innocently altered, improved, or forgotten. Over time the message can become very different from the original. The same can happen to our memories. There are countless reasons why tiny mistakes or embellishments might happen each time we recall past events, ranging from what we believe is true or wish were true, to what someone else told us about the past event, or what we want that person to think. And whenever these flaws happen, they can have long-term effects on how we’ll recall that memory in the future.Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we use artistic license to tell the story differently depending on who’s listening. We might ask ourselves whether it’s vital to get the facts straight, or whether we only want to make the listener laugh. And we might change the story’s details depending on the listener’s attitudes or political leaning. Research shows that when we describe our memories differently to different audiences it isn’t only the message that changes, but sometimes it’s also the memory itself. This is known as the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-13299-001" dir="ltr">“audience-tuning effect”</a>.<figure><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250920/original/file-20181217-185240-thdxkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" width="600" height="400"><figcaption dir="ltr">
 We often describe our memories differently depending on who’s listening.
 <a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-pretty-woman-telling-fascinating-story-267211376?src=vqPoURB5AUqX4ZG8bppukw-1-20" dir="ltr">ESB Professional/Shutterstock</a>
 </figcaption></figure><a href="https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-9335.40.3.138" dir="ltr">In one study</a> on the audience-tuning effect, participants watched a video of a bar fight. In the video, two intoxicated men get into a physical confrontation after one man has argued with his friend, and the other has seen his favourite football team lose a match. Afterwards, participants were asked to tell a stranger what they had seen.The study’s participants were split into two groups. One group was told that the stranger disliked one of the two fighters in the video. The other group was told that the stranger liked this same fighter. Unsurprisingly, this extra information shaped how people described the video to the stranger. Participants gave more negative accounts of the behaviour of the fighter if they believed the stranger disliked him. More importantly though, the way people told their story later affected the way they remembered the fighter’s behaviour. When participants later tried to remember the fight in a neutral, unbiased way, the two groups still gave somewhat differing accounts of what had happened, mirroring the attitude of their original audience. To an extent, these participants’ stories had become their memories.Results like these show us how our memories can change spontaneously over time, as a product of how, when, and why we access them. In fact, sometimes simply the act of rehearsing a memory can be exactly what makes it susceptible to change. This is known as “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility”.In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368117300724" dir="ltr">typical study of this effect</a>, participants watched a short film, then took a memory test a few days later. But during the days between watching the film and taking the final test, two other things happened. First, half of the participants took a practice memory test. Second, all of the participants were given a description of the film to read, which contained some false details. The aim of these studies was to see how many of the false details people would eventually reproduce in the final memory test. <a href="http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/12/4/361.short" dir="ltr">Hundreds of studies already show</a> that people will unwittingly add false details like these to their memories. But these studies found something even more fascinating. Participants who took a practice memory test shortly before reading the false information were more likely to reproduce this false information in the final memory test. In this case, practice makes imperfect. Why might this be? <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107474271630404X" dir="ltr">One theory</a> is that rehearsing our memories of past events can temporarily make those memories malleable. In other words, retrieving a memory might be a bit like taking ice-cream out of the freezer and leaving it in direct sunlight for a while. By the time our memory goes back into the freezer, it might have naturally become a little misshapen, especially if someone has meddled with it in the meantime.These findings teach us a lot about how our memories are formed and stored. And they might lead us to wonder how much our most treasured memories have changed since the very first time we remembered them.Or perhaps not. After all, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2016.1214280" dir="ltr">my research with other colleagues shows that</a> people are generally pretty unwilling to invest time and effort in checking the accuracy of their memories. But whether or not you ever actually discover any small or large changes that have occurred, it’s unlikely that your treasured memory is 100% accurate. Remembering is an act of storytelling, after all. And our memories are only ever as reliable as the most recent story we told ourselves.

Even our most treasured memories can gradually change over time.

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Robert Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Your memory probably isn’t as good as you think it is. We rely on our memories not only for <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938207">sharing stories </a>with friends or learning from our <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938208">past experiences </a>, but we also use it for crucial things like creating a <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/741938210">sense of personal identity </a>. Yet evidence shows that our <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2013.866683">memory isn’t as consistent </a>as we’d like to believe. What’s worse, we’re often guilty of changing the facts and <a dir="ltr" href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-false-memories-49454">adding false details </a>to our memories without even realising.

To understand a bit about how remembering works, consider the <a dir="ltr" href="https://icebreakerideas.com/telephone-game/">“telephone game” </a>(also known as “Chinese whispers”). In the game, one person quietly whispers a message to the person beside them, who then passes it on to the next person in line, and so on. Each time the message is relayed, some parts might be misheard or misunderstood, others might get innocently altered, improved, or forgotten. Over time the message can become very different from the original.

The same can happen to our memories. There are countless reasons why tiny mistakes or embellishments might happen each time we recall past events, ranging from what we believe is true or wish were true, to what someone else told us about the past event, or what we want that person to think. And whenever these flaws happen, they can have long-term effects on how we’ll recall that memory in the future.

Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we use artistic license to tell the story differently depending on who’s listening. We might ask ourselves whether it’s vital to get the facts straight, or whether we only want to make the listener laugh. And we might change the story’s details depending on the listener’s attitudes or political leaning. Research shows that when we describe our memories differently to different audiences it isn’t only the message that changes, but sometimes it’s also the memory itself. This is known as the <a dir="ltr" href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-13299-001">“audience-tuning effect” </a>.

<a dir="ltr" href="https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-9335.40.3.138">In one study </a>on the audience-tuning effect, participants watched a video of a bar fight. In the video, two intoxicated men get into a physical confrontation after one man has argued with his friend, and the other has seen his favourite football team lose a match. Afterwards, participants were asked to tell a stranger what they had seen.

The study’s participants were split into two groups. One group was told that the stranger disliked one of the two fighters in the video. The other group was told that the stranger liked this same fighter. Unsurprisingly, this extra information shaped how people described the video to the stranger. Participants gave more negative accounts of the behaviour of the fighter if they believed the stranger disliked him.

More importantly though, the way people told their story later affected the way they remembered the fighter’s behaviour. When participants later tried to remember the fight in a neutral, unbiased way, the two groups still gave somewhat differing accounts of what had happened, mirroring the attitude of their original audience. To an extent, these participants’ stories had become their memories.

Results like these show us how our memories can change spontaneously over time, as a product of how, when, and why we access them. In fact, sometimes simply the act of rehearsing a memory can be exactly what makes it susceptible to change. This is known as “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility”.

In a <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368117300724">typical study of this effect </a>, participants watched a short film, then took a memory test a few days later. But during the days between watching the film and taking the final test, two other things happened. First, half of the participants took a practice memory test. Second, all of the participants were given a description of the film to read, which contained some false details.

The aim of these studies was to see how many of the false details people would eventually reproduce in the final memory test. <a dir="ltr" href="http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/12/4/361.short">Hundreds of studies already show </a>that people will unwittingly add false details like these to their memories. But these studies found something even more fascinating. Participants who took a practice memory test shortly before reading the false information were more likely to reproduce this false information in the final memory test. In this case, practice makes imperfect.

Why might this be? <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107474271630404X">One theory </a>is that rehearsing our memories of past events can temporarily make those memories malleable. In other words, retrieving a memory might be a bit like taking ice-cream out of the freezer and leaving it in direct sunlight for a while. By the time our memory goes back into the freezer, it might have naturally become a little misshapen, especially if someone has meddled with it in the meantime.

These findings teach us a lot about how our memories are formed and stored. And they might lead us to wonder how much our most treasured memories have changed since the very first time we remembered them.

Or perhaps not. After all, <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2016.1214280">my research with other colleagues shows that </a>people are generally pretty unwilling to invest time and effort in checking the accuracy of their memories. But whether or not you ever actually discover any small or large changes that have occurred, it’s unlikely that your treasured memory is 100% accurate. Remembering is an act of storytelling, after all. And our memories are only ever as reliable as the most recent story we told ourselves.

Are memories reliable? Expert explains how they change more than we realise

Memory: The Hard Disk Of The Mind

The Game 'Chinese Whispers'

The Audience-Tuning Effect

Memories Are Malleable

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