How Friends Ruin Memory: The Social Conformity Effect, by Jonah Lehrer, starts off by talking about how past situations, or occurrences, become interesting stories by the twisting of facts, or not telling the whole truth.
Jonah mentions that it is nearly impossible for us, as human beings, to tell the whole truth when it comes to telling a story. He says that this is because we are “social animals, our memory of the past is constantly being revised to fit social pressures.”
Lehrer, than talks about an experiment that was done to test the theory that human’s memories are based off of others opinions. This experiment done by four neuroscientists proved that humans choose to alter what they remember so that we fit in with the social norm. Lehrer says, “nearly 70 percent to conform to the group and give an incorrect answer. They had revised their stories in light of the social pressure.” (Pg. 217)
After that, Lehrer talks about the results of the experiment and how it proved that, “the feedback of others has the ability to strongly shape our remembered experiences.” (Pg. 218) He mentions that humans are highly influenced by the memory and opinion of others, and trust the judgement of others. Therefor, making it that much easier to alter an individual opinion, and begin to share one with a larger group of people.
Lehrer says that, “We tweak our stories so that they become better stories.” But we believe most of the stories that we hear, especially coming from friends and family.
The Essay on Psychology: Human Memory
The article addresses the problems of interference as related to implicit memory. The study reveals the inconsistencies of the previous studies in the area of explicit and implicit memory, and the impact of interference on the memory performance. The authors of the article analyze the three major studies conducted in previous years. Lustig & Hasher (2001) refer to interference as “a primary ...
Why? Do we just accept the fact that they are never going to be fully true, or do we let others get away with it because we know that we over exaggerate our stories too? 2.Because we are so influenced by the opinions of others around us, would it be fair to say that humans are incapable of forming their own opinions? If not, how are we able to possess our true and honest own opinions?
Talking Points:
-Why do we alter our opinions to please others? Isn’t the point of having an opinion to express yourself and your true beliefs? -How are we able to believe what people say? According to Lehrer, and neuroscientists, we alter our opinions based on either people we are with, or people we are trying to please.