Memory

In the article " The Unreliable Nature of Memory" in the magazine called " The Great Courses," memory is explained as unreliable at times, especially under "emotionally charged conditions. An example of this is when people recall what happened at the scene of a crime. An eyewitness may believe that he or she saw something that in fact turned out to be false, primarily because they are reacting to their emotional responses to a situation. Because of this, eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as we would like to believe. The article also discusses "flash bulb memories," or memories that are so vivid that we remember minute details, such as where they were and what they were doing when some important event occurred.

I chose this article on memory because we are studying it in our textbook in chapter 6 on page 229. The book further explains that "Flashbulb memories" are so vivid because they hold a strong emotional tie to what the event means to us. According to the article the emotional feelings we feel from an event such as 9/11 is due to Long term memory being enhanced through hormones in the brain, but even a "flashbulb memory" that is so vivid can, over time become less memorable and we can actually start to remember things that didn't exactly happen the way we thought they did. We can end up adding and subtracting from the memory over time.