How reliable are your memories? How much “inferred information” is contaminating your memories?

You may think that because you know all the answers to the questions on Jeopardy that you have a good memory. It means you are good at memorizing.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a pretty big difference between the two. The more you want to remember something, the higher its risk of contamination.

Cues can trigger the recollection of memory, but they don’t necessarily help in remembering the whole of a memory.

Some common cues are smells (unfortunately bad ones usually make more of an impression), tastes or music. The last of these cues is especially susceptible to the phenomenon of bias.

Bias is the sixth in a list of “The Seven Sins of Memory” compiled by Dr. Dan Schacter, professor of psychology at Harvard University.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things don’t come to mind when we want them to.” If forgetting doesn’t exist, why can’t we always remember everything accurately?

Suggestibility is No. 5 on the list, and he explains it as the susceptibility of memories to be implanted or enhanced by leading questions, or by the perception of what a situation should be.

For instance, if a person usually washes their car on Saturday, and someone asks them to recount everything they did on a Saturday two months ago, they would probably say that they washed their car, even if they hadn’t.

Confidence and suggestibility is an extremely dangerous combination. We’ve all met that person that insists that their memory is the most reliable, that their details are correct.

Because of their overly confident opinion of their abilities, they are unable to admit defeat in any context. Due to this inability, small details of a memory, such as clothing color, are invariably “inferred.”

So forgetfulness is a common problem. What about the opposite problem? What about memories you just can’t seem to forget?

This phenomenon is the seventh sin of memory: persistence. Most of the time, persistence occurs in the case of a traumatic memory. It’s the memories we would prefer to forget that are the easiest to remember.

Disturbing images make much more of an impression, and are therefore much more memorable. Think about the phenomenon of persistence before you go see “The Woman in Black this weekend.

Reminiscence bump is the phenomenon, for most adults, where the time between adolescence and adulthood is the easiest to recall. That’s us folks.

The moral of this article is that you should make some good memories now, because this is what you’ll be remembering for the rest of your life.

The good news is that even if you don’t, by the time you’re 50, your memories will be so inaccurate that you’ll think you had the best time ever!

Mari is a sophomore majoring in English and music (piano).