The Seven Sins Of Memory Updated Edition: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers Paperback – September 14, 2021

The Seven Sins of Memory(How the Mind Forgets and Remembers)Daniel L. SchacterChair of Harvard University's Department of PsychologyQuotes from the book:... memory's malfunctions can be divided into seven fundamental transgressions or "sins," which I call transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Just like the ancient seven deadly sins, the memories sins occur frequently in everyday life and can have serious consequences for all of us.Transients, absent mindedness, and blocking our sins of omission: we failed to bring to mind a desired fact event or idea. Transience refers to a weakening or loss of memory over time. Absent-mindedness involves a breakdown at the interface between attention and memory.... Blocking, entails a thwarted search for information that we may be desperately trying to retrieve.The sin of misattribution involves assigning of memory to a wrong source: mistaking fantasy for reality, or incorrectly remembering that a friend told you a bit of trivia that you actually read about in a newspaper. Misattribution is far more common than most people realize, and has both potentially profound implications in legal settings. The related sin of suggestibility refers to memories that are implanted as a result of leading questions, comments, or suggestions when a person is trying to recall up a past experience. Like misattribution, suggestibility is especially relevant to -- and sometimes can wreck havoc within -- the legal system.The sin of bias reflects the powerful influences of our current knowledge and beliefs on how we remember our pasts. We often edit or entirely rewrite our previous experiences -- unknowingly and unconsciously -- in light of what we now know or believe. The result can be a skewed rendering of a specific incident, or even expanded. In our lives, which says more about how we feel now than about how what happened then.The seventh sin -- persistence -- entails repeated recall of disturbing information or events that we would prefer to banish from our minds altogether: remembering what we cannot forget, even though we wish that we could.People incorrectly claim -- often with great confidence -- having experienced events that have not happened. ... is there a way to tell the difference between true and false memories?... we tend to think of memories as snapshots from family albums that, if stored properly, could be retrieved in precisely the same condition in which they were put away. But we now know that we do not record our experiences the way the camera records them. Our memories work differently. We extract key elements from our experiences and store them. We then re-create or reconstruct our experiences rather than retrieve copies of them. Sometimes, in the process of reconstructing we add on feelings, beliefs, or even knowledge we obtained after the experience. In other words, we bias our memories of the past by attributing to them emotions or knowledge we acquired after the event.... several different types of biases that sometimes skew our memories. For instance "consistency biases" lead us to rewrite our past feelings and beliefs so that they resemble what we feel and believe now. "Egocentric biases," in contrast, reveal that we often remember the past and self-enhancing manner.... misattribution arises because our memory systems encode information selectively and efficiently, rather than indiscriminately storing details, ... bias can facilitate psychological well-being.Five major types of biases illustrate the ways in which memory serves its masters.Consistency and change biases show how our theories about ourselves can lead us to reconstruct the past as overly similar to, or different from, the present. Hindsight biases reveal that recollections of past events are filtered by current knowledge.Egocentric biases illustrate the powerful role of the self in orchestrating perceptions and memories of reality.And stereotypical biases demonstrate how generic memories shape interpretation of the world, even when we are unaware of their existence or influence.This effects of consistency and change bias are perhaps nowhere more evident than in recollections of close personal relationships. Recall the 1970s Barbara Streisand tune "The Way We Were":MemoriesMay be beautiful, and yetWhat's too painful to rememberWe simply choose to forget;For it's the laughterWe will rememberWhenever we rememberThe way we were.Such biases can lead to a dangerous downward spiral. The worst your current view of your partner is, the worst your memories are, which only further confirms your negative attitudes.Objectively, the couples did not love each other more today than yesterday. But through the subjective lenses of memory, they did.When reflecting back on the first 10 years of their marriages, wives showed a change bias: they remembered their initial assessments as worse than they actually were. The bias made their present feelings seem an improvement by comparison, even though the wives actually felt more negatively 10 years into their marriage than they had at the beginning. When they had been married for 20 years and reflected back on their second 10 years of marriage, the women now showed a consistency bias: they mistakenly recalled that feelings from 10 years earlier were similar to their present ones. In reality, however, they felt more negatively after 20 years of marriage then after 10. Both types of bias helped women cope with their marriages. The more women's recollections were bias toward improvement at the 10 year mark, the happier they were with their marriages at the 20 year mark. By the 20 year mark wives who were most satisfied with their marriages showed the least memory bias, whereas those who were least satisfied showed the most biased -- perhaps reflecting ongoing attempts to cope with unhappy present by distorting the past. Memories of "the way we were" are not only influenced by, but also contribute to, "the way we are."Judgments about sports events and O.J. Simpson trial illustrated a familiar occurrence in everyday life: once we learn the outcome of an event, we feel as though we always knew what would happen. Called hindsight bias by psychologists, this tendency to see an outcome as inevitable in retrospect is a close cousin of consistency bias: we reconstruct the past to make it consistent with what we know in the present.Something similar occurs among courtroom jurors. Suppose that the prosecution introduces evidence from a seemingly incriminating telephone conversation, the defense objects to it, and the judge rules that the evidence is inadmissible. He then sternly instructs the jurors to disregard the evidence in their deliberations. Numerous studies have shown that mock jurors placed in such a situation cannot disregard inadmissible evidence, even in the face of explicit instructions to ignore it: they are more likely to convict then our jurors who never hear the inadmissible evidence. The same holds for incriminating pretrial publicity that jurors are instructed to ignore. Once the evidence enters the memories of jurors, they are biased to feel that they "knew all along" that the defendant was guilty.Even though they often seem like our enemies, the seven sins are an integral part of the mind's heritage because they are so closely connected to features of memory which make it work well. The seemingly contradictory relationship between memory's sins and virtues captured the attention of Fanny Price, that heroine of Jane Austen's 19th-century novel Mansfield Park. Admiring a beautiful shrub -- lined walkway that had emerged from a formally rough patch of ground, she recalled what the walkway had looked like years earlier, and wondered whether she would lose this memory in the future. The moment inspired her to contemplate seemingly contradictory properties of memory.If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, than in the qualities of memory, than any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannically, so beyond control! We are to be sure a miracle every way -- but our powers of recollecting and forgetting, do seem particularly past finding out.The seven sins are not merely nuisances to minimize or avoid. They also illuminate how memory draws on the past to inform the present, preserve elements of present experience for future reference, and allows us to revisit the past at will. Memory's vices are also its virtues, elements of a bridge across time which allows us to link the mind with the world.

My undertaking of "The Seven sins of Memory" was more of an intellectual curiosity than for a scientific research. In this endeavor David Schacter made me more aware of the workings of memory. His work is divided into eight chapters; the first seven dedicated to a specific lacking which he calls sin and the eight to the virtues and vices of memory.Transience: A sin of loosing memory over time. It may be a vice if one forgets information at a crucial time; but it can work as a gift, for remembering every event with vivid detail would clutter the thinking process. To prevent loosing key data Schacter suggests using visual mnemonics to elaborate on information they wish to remember.Absent Mindedness: A sin committed when we are devoting our mental resources to more important things like wrestling with a personal dilemma or pre-occupied with an urgent task. Insufficient attention paid at the time of encoding is an important contributor to absent-mindedness.Blocking: the phrase "It is at the tip of my tongue" a key indicator to this sin. Information that has not been encountered recently is susceptible to blocking. Names are especially susceptible to be blocked. Encountering a person activates both the conceptual and lexical representation for that person and this strengthens their interconnection. If we don't see a person for some time the link is weakened. Name blocking is more common than objects, as objects can be described in multiple levels for e.g., Honda, Accord, Sedan, car automobile, vehicle etc.Misattribution: a sense of déjà vu. A strong sense of general familiarity, together with an absence of specific recollections, adds up to a lethal recipe for misattribution.Suggestibility: Relates to an individuals tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources, other people, sources, media, pictures into personal re-collections. Emotional stress, combined with social pressure and suggestion, could distract memory to the point at which people falsely believe they had committed a crime.Bias: refers to influences of our present knowledge, belief and feeling on new experiences or memories of them.Persistence: is strongly linked with our emotional lives the relationship between emotion and memory are key. Emotionally charged incidents are better remembered than non-emotional events. Hence these events are remembered and persist over time.On the whole it was easy read. One does not need a medical or psychology degree to understand the message. I liked the fact that Schacter has included numerous experiments and examples to explain his theories.

Good

Documentato e non banale, profondo ma non noioso. E da una speranza a chi perde la memoria ( o parte di essa)

Very good read

In den letzten Jahren sind einige Bücher über das Gedächtnis und seine Probleme erschienen. Eines der neuesten ist das Buch von Julia Shaw, The Memory Illusion (deutsch Das trügerische Gedächtnis). Da ist ein Rückblick auf dieses bereits 2001 erschienene Buch von Schacter interessant. Beide, Schacter und Shaw, haben die Absicht, populärwissenschaftlich zu sein. Das ist zweifellos Frau Shaw weitaus besser gelungen. Ihre Thematik, die enger ist, als die von Schacter, nämlich ausgesprochene Gedächtnisverfälschungen, erregt vor allem im Zusammenhang mit forensischen Fragestellungen viele Gemüter, und ihre Darstellung ist (fast) immer relativ leicht lesbar.Schacter zeigt bereits in seiner Einführung (die auch bei ihm wirklich leicht verstehbar ist), dass er nicht in erster Linie ein leicht verständliches Buch über ein gesellschaftlich wichtiges Thema schreiben will. Schacter will ein allgemein interessierendes Thema mit der Systematik des Wissenschaftlers angehen. So kommt er zu seinen sieben Sünden, sieben ursächlich unterschiedliche Probleme, die jeder Mensch mit einem gesunden Gedächtnis in unterschiedlichem Maße an sich selbst erfährt. Dabei geht es keineswegs um Krankhaftes.Als deutschsprachiger Rezensent habe ich bereits Probleme, seine sieben Sünden in gleichwertige deutsche Ausdrücke zu übersetzen. Deshalb nenne ich jeweils auch die englische Formulierung. Es sind: Transience (Vergänglichkeit), Absent-Mindedness (Unkonzentriertheit, Gedankenlosigkeit), Blocking (Blockierung), Misattribution (Falschzuordnung), Suggestibility (Empfänglichkeit für Suggestionen), Bias (Vorurteil) und Persistence (Hartnäckigkeit).Die deutschen Übersetzungen sind unzureichend. Sie geben wenig Auskunft über das, was einen in den jeweils einer seiner Sünden zugeordneten sieben Kapiteln erwartet. Denn jedes dieser Kapitel ist eine knapp gefasste Übersicht, über das, was uns die Wissenschaft zu dem jeweiligen Schwachpunkt unseres Gedächtnisses lehren kann. Dabei macht Schacter wenig Kompromisse bei seinen Aussagen: Auch wenn er versucht, das Fachchinesich zu vermeiden, ist er anspruchsvoll und verlangt von seinen Lesern ständiges aktives Mitdenken. Als echter Wissenschaftler ist er auch sehr vorsichtig. Wo andere bereits in Hinsicht auf die hohe Wahrscheinlichkeit ihrer Aussagen diese im Indikativ formulieren würden (das und das ist so und so), schreibt Schacter immer noch im Konjunktiv (das und das könnte so und so sein).Wer sich aber auf Schacter und die von ihm erwartete Lese- oder besser Arbeits-Weise einlässt, wird belohnt. Man erhält nicht nur eine Übersicht über alle möglichen Probleme, die das Gedächtnis uns bereitet, sondern auch Hinweise, wie man damit besser umgehen kann. Selbstverständlich kann ein vor 15 Jahren erschienenes Buch die in der Zwischenzeit hinzugekommenen wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse nicht enthalten. Doch die Bedeutung dieses Buchs liegt in der zugrunde liegenden Systematik, und die veraltet nicht so schnell.Natürlich sind auch die von Frau Shaw behandelten Gedächtnisverfälschungen in Schacters Buch enthalten, und sie sind im ganzen Buch verteilt, weil sie keineswegs auf nur eine seiner sieben Sünden zurückzuführen sind.Dass Schacter nicht mit den Scheuklappen des Nur-Wissenschaftlers denkt, erkennt man an Exkursen auf philophischem oder gesellschaftlichem Gebiet, aber vor allem an dem abschließenden Kapitel, in dem Schacter klarstellt, dass hinter seiner sieben Sünden eigentlich sieben Tugenden stehen: Alle die von ihm ausgebreiteten Schwachpunkte haben einen Sinn, und er kann uns überzeugen, dass wir in ein entsetzliches Chaoskämen, wenn das Gedächtnis ohne diese "Sünden" in oberflächlicher Sicht "perfekt" wäre.

私は日本語版と英語版を読み比べてみました．そこで気づいた表面的なことをレビューします．①エッセイ調の軽妙な文体なので飽きずに楽しく読めます．科学論文の文体ではありません．ただ，逆にそのエッセイ調の文体（ちょっとしたレトリックなど）につまずいたということもありました．（もちろん読めないほどではありません）．②文章中には実験や過去の出来事なんかが多数紹介されていますが，日本語版にはその出典がかかれていません．英語版では巻末に出典がのっています（文章中での，Schacter,D.L.(1999)というような表記はありませんよ）