False Memories Affect the Best of Us

When it comes to having siblings, I'm sure most people have had the experience of thinking they were the star of the story. If there's a funny story where a kid did something, multiple siblings seem to remember it was them that did it. This happens all the time to my twin sister and I, where we both think we were the one who did something, and get into an argument because we are positive it was us. We've both heard the story enough that we've made our own memories around it, forcing ourselves into the lead role to where we can't tell who it actually happened to.

I've always prided myself on my good memory, and I know I have a better one than my sister, but that doesn't protect me from this anomaly of attributing memories to myself even if they weren't mine. Because this is so common and happens to everyone, as well as usually happens on stories or things that don't matter that much in the scheme of things, you don't think about the consequences of what could happen if an important memory is false.

In one case, I had a friend who I found out was a compulsive liar. Once they told the lie enough, they came to completely believe it, even if they would tell a slightly different version to different people. If someone were to be like this friend, and came to completely believe a false memory, they could hurt people when it comes to unjustly accusing someone of something.

People also convince themselves of certain facts and then completely believe them when it comes to setting agendas, like deciding why an event happened or certain facts about it, like with national disasters like 9/11, riots, protests, etc. This could lead to unintentionally creating biases and diminishing media literacy by avoiding actual facts. Not only that, but because we are constantly consuming information from social media in our daily lives, we have many more chances to misattribute information. The matter of fake or misconstrued news also doesn't help matters, with people not fact checking before sharing or internalizing news, preventing the truth from reaching certain people. So, while usually it's a very harmless thing to misattribute memories, there are certain cases that it can cause problems.