Imagining or visualizing past experiences — reliving or assessing them in one’s mind — can have a significant impact on what is remembered, even create vivid details or memories of events that never happened.
The development of altered or false memories as a result of imagining or visualizing real or hypothetical events from the past is called “imagination inflation."
Social psychology and neuroscientific studies have revealed that because of the malleable and fluid process that takes place when memories are formed or replayed, the act of thinking about an experience is less like a rerun of a video and more like a live improvisational skit. Imagining something, even for as little as one minute, can boost confidence in the reliability of the thought.
How much a memory is influenced and altered by imagination depends on a number of factors such as how long ago the event occurred, the age of the individual, familiarity and plausibility of imagined event, how one feels during the recounting of a memory or the introduction of new information.
How Long Ago Something Occurred Increases Imagination Inflation
The farther back in time memory recedes, the more susceptible it is to imagination inflation. Studies done by Princeton psychologist Marcia Johnson, Ph.D. show that recent memory is seldom altered by imagination or visualization, but that reinventing what happened becomes much more prevalent when people are asked to think of or imagine autobiographical data from childhood.
Age however, affects this time-distance factor in an interesting way. Young children are most susceptible to imagination inflation, and scientists hypothesize it’s because they are more prone to hypnotic suggestibility and disassociation.
The famous case of the imagined “kidnapping” attempt of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget when he was young illustrates this phenomenon. Even though Piaget’s nanny later confessed to fabricating the entire story, Piaget himself had constructed such an elaborately detailed memory that even when faced with the truth, he said it still felt like the kidnapping had actually occurred.
Familiarity and Plausibility of Imagined Event Affects Formation of False Memories
Researchers have investigated how familiarity and plausibility contribute to false autobiographical memories, and conclude that in most cases memories of a false event are constructed from related information already present in memory.
Psychologists suggest that imagining a hypothetical experience encourages individuals to activate relevant generic and specific details already stored in memory to create a more vivid memory for the false event.
Study subjects, however, were significantly less likely to engage in imagination inflation if the imagined false scenario was implausible, hence an individual wasn't likely to create a believable memory from imagining they had won the lottery when they really hadn’t.
Mood at Time of Recall Can Change Memory
Neuroscientist and best-selling author Richard Restak posits in his 2006 book from Harmony books, The Naked Brain , that one’s mood at the time of recall can also influence memory. “If we’re depressed enough we even alter our memories sufficiently that past events that had seemed happy at the time take on a dark, forbidding tone: ‘Yes, we enjoyed the week at the beach, but two weeks later the dog died.'"
The mind mixes current feelings or additional information with the memory, creating a whole new experience of the event.
Introduction of Additional Information Can Impact Opinion
“Backward framing” is the tendency to revise memories based on additional information or feelings that are introduced after an event. Hearing someone else’s recall or reading another account or hypothesis can create uncertainty in the validity of one’s memory and cause changes.
Experiments in how marketing can influence consumer opinion even after consumers have voiced a specific memory of a product or service (that tasted horrible or the movie was terrible) indicate that by simply providing a differing opinion in the form of a review or reference to past experiences, the opinion can often be altered without the individual even being aware their recall has changed.
Memory Should be Viewed as Always Evolving
Experts agree that imagination-influenced memories can be useful and harmful, on the one hand by allowing memories of previous experiences or visualizations of possible outcomes to be used to prepare for future opportunities or avoid danger, on the other by creating firm beliefs that something truly happened that didn’t and taking action based on imaginary wrongs.
The key seems to be maintaining a healthy skepticism to the workings of memory and understanding that many factors, some having nothing to do with facts, contribute to the continuous evolution of memory.
Karen Lawrence - Karen Lawrence is a freelance writer and administrative consultant based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She specializes in nature, ...
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