“NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been grilled for embellishing his role in the 2003 event in Iraq when a helicopter flying in front of him was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. He later recalled that he was in the helicopter that was hit.
Of course he has apologized now for the inaccuracy of his story. But although many have branded him a liar at this point, it might not be that simple. Our memories are not like tape-recorded occurrences. Memories shift and change, and in some cases, we are completely capable of having authentically false memories that we actually think are true.
“You’ve got all these people saying the guy’s a liar and convicting him of deliberate deception without considering an alternative hypothesis — that he developed a false memory,” Elizabeth Loftus, a leading memory researcher and a professor of law and cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine told The New York Times. “It’s a teaching moment, and a chance to really try to get information out there about the malleable nature of memory.”
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
As the Times points out, Williams isn’t the only public figure who remembered previous events incorrectly. “Hillary Rodham Clinton once claimed to have been under sniper fire in Bosnia, only to later admit she had her facts wrong. Mitt Romney said he remembered a Detroit jubilee that took place nine months before he was born.”
Over time, our memories are affected by many things. Not only do exact details of memories generally fade in some ways inevitably, but things like conversations with other people, what we hear on the news, photographs we see, and hearing other people’s accounts of the same event can drastically change our interpretation of something that happened.
“It’s as though you’re playing the telephone game,” said Christopher Chabris, co-author of “The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us,” and an associate professor of psychology at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.. “You whisper a message and by the time it gets to the last kid it’s a completely different story than when it started.”
Many studies have explored how memories can be manipulated in relatively simple ways. One study found that eyewitness accounts of a car crash were influenced by whether researchers used the verb smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted when asking about the accident. Those who were asked about how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” thought the speed was higher than those who were asked about when the cars “hit.”
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
It’s reasonable for people to be uncomfortable with the fact that an acclaimed journalist “misremembered” events so drastically (or lied). But maybe it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that we all have done and do the same thing to a certain extent, probably a lesser extent, yes. But our brains are capable of a lot when it comes to memory reconstruction.
[Photo from Flickr user David Shankbone]
