Do you really want to adopt that puppy?
During the summer of 2020 Covid-19 quarantine, one of the most popular ideas floating around online to help pass the time was to adopt or foster a new animal. But, did people remember how difficult that task actually is? Do they remember all those early mornings, pee puddles, and chewed up furniture? Rosy retrospection may explain why people were likely to adopt despite the difficulty of raising and training a new animal. Rosy retrospection is the process by which we remember past events as generally better than they were by forgetting or downplaying the negative aspects. Before I get into all the definitions, think about whether you have ever participated in something that is difficult mentally or physically while you do it, but then somehow when you look back on it, it doesn’t seem so bad and you’d do it again? This could be adopting an animal, running a marathon, or helping a friend move. In the moment, you are aware of the discomfort and negative aspects, but in the future you are willing to do it again because you remember the best parts of the experience. I’m going to be using the example of raising a new puppy to highlight how rosy retrospection and a few other aspects of memory can change how we view the past.
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If you are driving in the car and your favorite song from middle school comes on, you are most likely able to instantly start singing every word of it. Have you ever stopped and wondered how you could remember all of the words from so long ago? Well, that is due to processes in your memory where lyrics to a song can be easier to encode into your memory. Before I get into that, I will first describe some basic aspects of memory. The steps in memory processes include encoding, which inputs environmental information into our memory; storage, which is the process of storing that information in memory; and retrieval, which is the output of information from our memory. The modal model of memory, created by Atkinson and Shiffrin, begins with an input of environmental stimuli that gets stored in sensory memory for a short period of time in order to recognize any patterns. We then focus our attention on the information we want to store in our memory, sending that information to short term memory. This information can also be placed into long term memory. Information can then be retrieved from our long term memory, such as the lyrics to that favorite song from middle school (McBride & Cutting, 2019). This information on memory provides some background of what I will now discuss, which is why we are able to remember the lyrics to so many songs.
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Misconceptions about schizophrenia http://schizophreniasucks.blogspot.com/2013/07/schizophrenia-memes.html
Elyn Saks, an accomplished Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at University of Southern California Gould School of Law, has lived with schizophrenia for her entire life. In her memoir, “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness”, Saks explains that the cognitive nature of her illness was a large factor in her decision to write a book. She speaks out about how she has struggled every single day living with this disorder, yet she was ultimately incredibly cognitively and professionally successful. Her disorder made it very difficult to hold attention in class or on school work when she was having a schizophrenic episode, and her diminished memory abilities made her work and relationships endure a different level of impairment. Elyn struggled with schizophrenia at a time when mental health was not at the forefront of societal concerns as it is today, and all of the symptoms she dealt with left her feeling alone and depressed, as making and keeping emotional connections with others was quite a troublesome task for her. So, here is an incredibly accomplished woman working at a prestigious institution who has endured a debilitating disorder that is stereotypically portrayed and misunderstood with a connotation of violent, dangerous, and potentially crazy individuals. The impressive work that Saks has done in sharing her story has contributed significantly to reducing the stigma of schizophrenia and has provided useful information in terms of the efficacy of various forms of treatment for the disorder, and you can click here to learn more about the efficacy of psychological treatment in schizophrenia. My interest focused on how this crippling disorder affects individuals’ cognitive processes, in particular considering the detrimental effects it has on both memory and attention.
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Have you ever seen a celebrity that you loved and idolized do something wrong? For example, a few years ago the actress Reese Witherspoon’s husband got a DUI while she was driving with him. Reese was quite rude to the police that pulled them over, which caused her to also get arrested for disorderly conduct. She asked the police if they knew who she was, and then when they responded no she warned that they were “about to find out”. She also ignored instructions from the police officer to stay in the car, and resisted arrest.
Chances are, if you were a fan of the actress like I am, you were pretty shocked to hear this story. Despite never having met Reese Witherspoon personally, you assumed she was a kind, respectful person who would never do or say these kinds of things. You may have even been shocked by Reese’s appearance in her mugshot, where she appears disheveled and not like her usual, made-up and presentable self. Why are we so shocked by this, when Reese Witherspoon is literally a stranger to us??
Reese Witherspoon as we “normally” picture her
Reese Witherspoon’s mug shot following her husband’s DUI
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I wish I hadn’t overslept. Now I’m late to class and I didn’t get to eat breakfast. That reading I meant to finish early this morning? It’s sitting in my backpack, untouched. My socks don’t match, I forgot my hat, and my dorm room is a mess from scrambling around this morning hurrying to get myself together. Today’s going to be the worst day. Or is it?
Some people have a natural tendency to notice the bad over the good. For example, in the situation above, these “bad” things may have happened, but why place so much weight on them? Why let them consume our thoughts, even dictate how the rest of our day will go? It is likely that a few good things happened throughout our day, too, but we sometimes tend not to notice the good as strongly as we notice the bad. Oftentimes, this negativity bias comes into play during our judgement and decision-making processes, causing the experiences we have to feel more negative than they may really be (i.e., I woke up late so now my whole day is ruined) (Ito et al., 1998).
(The bad seems to outweigh the good). https://twunroll.com/article/1267492380703428614
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Imagine this: You enter your dorm room after a long, difficult day, and you’re in a bad mood. You’ve been in the library all afternoon, you’re drenched to the core from walking back in the rain, and you still have what feels like an actual mountain of homework left. As you’re unpacking your bag, events from the day run through your mind, and they’re all negative: the test that didn’t go so well, the lunch that wasn’t great, the workout that felt particularly hard… the list goes on. Your day was not entirely bad, yet you’re only able to remember the not-so-great moments.
If you can relate to the above story, you’ve experienced the effects of mood-congruent memory, which is the idea that the memories we retrieve tend to be consistent with our current emotional state. This explains why people who are in a bad mood recall negative memories, and the same goes for all types of moods. Mood-congruency affects people’s attention, too, but I’m going to focus on memory. Essentially, individuals’ moods dictate the types of memories to which they have access, which in turn reinforce their current mood state. This can be helpful when the positive memories contribute to the happy mood, and it’s generally not a big deal when the bad mood is temporary, since the negative memories will likely soon be replaced by more cheerful ones. That being said, the reciprocal relationship between mood and memory can be dangerous when the sad mood state is constant. Consider, for instance, individuals who suffer from depression.
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Imagine yourself on a chilly day cooking up a nice golden-brown grilled cheese sandwich. You go to take your first bite, when all of a sudden you see the Virgin Mary staring back at you imprinted in the char of the toast. This is how Diane Duyser started one of her days back in 1994, thinking that she had been blessed by the Virgin Mary because of this imagery on her toast. This grilled cheese sandwich ended up being sold for $28,000 because Duyser was able to market it as having mystical powers. However, mechanisms of cognitive psychology would reveal that the true power at work in this story is pareidolia.
Diane Duyser and her famous piece of toast. (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ article223937640.html)
Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive an often meaningful entity in a random or ambiguous stimulus like a cloud, cabinet, or mountain. I will be focusing on face pareidolia, which is the most common form of pareidolia (Taubert, Wardle, Flessert, Leopold, & Ungerleider, 2017). Face Pareidolia can be specifically defined as seeing face-like features in everyday objects. Some additional examples of face pareidolia can be seen below with the flower meme and trashcan meme examples. (Here are 30 more examples!) Now that you’ve had a few laughs about these often hilarious faces, it is time to answer the question: how and why do we experience pareidolia? Read more…
It’s Saturday morning. I wake up, have breakfast, listen to some music, and pack my bag for what I am about to do. Like many highschool and college athletes, I am preparing for perhaps the biggest day of the week – Game day! As I arrive at the field, I immediately start eyeballing today’s opponent. What type of team are they? Are they strong? Weak? Fast? Slow? My team I already know well, and I am confident that our different strengths will help us to win this game. As a team player on my college’s rugby team myself, I often find myself viewing the teams that we play against differently and less varied than my own team. My own team, of course, is made up of a diverse group of players with different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Other teams, however, I tend to have a more simple opinion of when we take the field. One cognitive phenomenon may be able to partially explain why this occurs.
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The instances of discrepancies between people’s memories of the same event are numerous. I bet that as you read that sentence, you remembered a moment where you fought with a friend or family member about the actualities of a past experience—both of you adamant that your account was correct. However, the likely case is that you are both misremembering some details. The alteration of the details of memory does not matter much in a petty argument, but it matters a great deal in the situation of eyewitness testimony.
Is your truth accurate?
Memories are edited and distorted constantly, resulting in inaccurate remembering. Along with being in place for the storage of your childhood memories and everyday experiences, your memory is also a system to help in making future decisions and drawing on past experiences for the present. The entire memory system is a reconstructive process. By reconstructive, I mean that there are consistent rebuilding and molding of memories after the event. If you think of the details of memory as playdough building blocks, you can envision those details being squished into new shapes and shifted around. As seen in the image to the left, one person’s “truth” may not be the actual truth. Daniel Schachter introduced the concept of the 7 sins of memory (Schacter, Guerin, & St. Jacques, 2011). These sins describe how our memory can “fail” us when we forget things, misremember events, do not encode, or incorporate incorrect information into a memory. Each of these sins results in distorted memories. When you retrieve a memory, it becomes susceptible to change.
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Think about the last time you had a great day. Just kidding. Think about the last time you had a bad day. Then try and think a little further: was it really all bad, from the moment you got out of bed? Probably not; one bad thing happened, and then the good lunch you had with your friends and the job interview you aced just didn’t seem so important anymore. Or maybe you were at work, and your boss is gave you some well-deserved praise. Then she told you there was one line on your paperwork that needed to be tweaked, and before you knew it, you were beating yourself up for that one mistake for the rest of the week. Or maybe you went home after work and turned on the news. The coverage never surprises you: war, crime, disaster. Maybe you wonder why this is. Your answer? Negative news attracts more consumers (Nguyen & Claus, 2013).
Our brains tend to focus on and prioritize negative information, even when there is just as much (or more) positive information.
If you’ve had a bad day (that with a different perspective, could’ve been a great day), taken criticism a little too personally, or found yourself transfixed by a car accident on the highway, chances are you’ve experienced a cognitive bias called the Negativity Bias. The Negativity Bias refers to how we pay more attention to, and care more about, negative negative information than we do positive information. Read more…
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