Читать книгу The Interpersonal Communication Playbook - Teri Kwal Gamble - Страница 121

Memory is a composite of what we read, piece together, experience, and/or want to be true.²⁷ How we interpret and evaluate a stimulus determines whether or not what we experience enters our memory and can later be retrieved. The question is, how reliable are our recollections? Can we count on our perceptual abilities to supply us with accurate memories of experience?

Consider this: When Americans were surveyed and asked to recall their memories of what they observed early on September 11, 2001, 76 percent of those surveyed in New York and 73 percent of those surveyed nationwide recalled watching television broadcasts of the two planes that struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center.²⁸ These, however, were false memories. In fact, there is no video of the first plane hitting the tower. What people experienced was a “flashbulb memory”—memories that feel as sharp as though they just happened, but are almost always wrong.²⁹ Memories can be unreliable and often are a mingling of what did happen together with information acquired days or even years after the actual event. Despite this, we often insist that our memories are totally correct.

We do not simply reproduce what we store in our memory. Instead of objectively recalling an experience, we try to reconstruct a memory at the time of withdrawal. However, as we engage in retrospection or backward reasoning, inaccuracies may creep in. While trying to remember, we infer past occurrences based on who we are and what we now believe and know. We tend to recall information consistent with our schemata and discount or forget information that is not. On the other hand, if information dramatically contradicts any of our schemata, compelling us to think about it, this can lead us to revise the schemata we use.

Nostalgia, a special kind of memory, can be defined as a bitter-sweet longing for memories of experiences that we cannot recapture. Experiencing nostalgia inspires us to live fuller lives by reminding us of experiences and people that mattered to us in the past. Nostalgic feelings contribute to our wanting to build and nurture our present social lives.³⁰