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Mind's lie

Human memory routinely makes fact from fiction

Virtually every American adult has heard the rumors: Barack Obama is a Muslim. John McCain fathered a black baby. Obama won't recite the Pledge of Allegiance. McCain was brainwashed as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam.

These statements are untrue, even ridiculous. Each has been repeatedly repudiated and refuted by the candidates. Yet the falsehoods persist. An astounding 94 percent of adult Americans have heard at least one of these bogus rumors, according to a recent poll by the Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.

Part of the blame, of course, lies with partisan forces on both sides who are willing, even eager, to employ rumor and innuendo to their advantage. That's politics.

But some blame falls upon everyone else, upon ordinary Americans who repeat such statements, even when they may have originally doubted their veracity. That's human nature.

Among the quirkier aspects of human cognition is the way our brains store and recall memories, frequently converting rumors, falsities and opinions into perceived, recollected fact.

“Everybody does it,” said Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University. “Memory formation and retrieval isn't like writing something down on a piece of paper. Memories drift and change, and things we may have once doubted, we no longer do.”

The human brain doesn't download information like a computer, burning data onto incorruptible hard drives. New facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a pair of pinkie-sized structures deep within the brain, but they don't stay there permanently or unchanged.

As we recall stored facts, said Wang, our brains reprocess them, collate them with new information, re-interpret the result, then re-store them as new and “improved” memories. Over time, much-used facts are transferred from the hippocampus to the cerebral cortex, the grayish, many-folded outer layer of the brain.

Somewhere along the way, said Wang, these facts may be separated from the context in which they were first learned.

“You remember the capital of California is Sacramento, for example. You don't remember the day in third grade when you learned that fact.”

Psychologists and neuroscientists call this phenomenon “source amnesia,” and it's vital to everyday cognitive functioning. Your brain tosses out or forgets lots of information every day. It has to. “You wouldn't want to remember every place you ever left your car keys,” Wang said.

But source amnesia becomes problematic when we encounter information from a dubious source because we tend to remember the information but forget who provided it.

Wang cites the case of Sen. John Kerry, who was accused during the 2004 presidential campaign of grossly exaggerating his Vietnam War service. The allegations by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were immediately disputed, described by many as a scurrilous smear by a partisan group. But political observers say the claims hurt Kerry nonetheless. Voters remembered the accusation, not the accuser.

It happens every day, in every aspect of life. People routinely absorb information without retaining the accompanying attribution or context. We hear that a tooth left overnight in Coca-Cola will dissolve. (It won't.) We see smooth-skinned women selling anti-aging wrinkle cream on TV. (The women are in their 20s.) We read that people use only 10 percent of their brains. (Thinking is a whole-brain operation.)

“If a person remembers both the information and the source, then he or she can reason about whether the source is reliable,” said Arthur B. Markman, a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas, Austin.

“But if the information is recalled without the source, then that information is likely to be treated as being true because of our bias to consider things we know about to be true.”

Believe me you

Bias plays a big part in what we believe and remember.

People often believe questionable or false statements “not because they correspond to truth, but because they chime in with what people want to believe,” said Karl Scheibe, an emeritus professor of psychology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

“In the present political contest, both sides are quick to label the slanders coming from the other side as lies,” said Scheibe. “This is clearly a case of entrenched values influencing what is seen to be true. As someone has said, where you stand on a particular instance of political theater these days depends entirely upon where you sit.”

There is plenty of research to back this up. In a much-cited Stanford University psychology experiment, for example, two groups of students were asked to evaluate the validity of a study that examined whether the death penalty worked as a deterrent to crime. One group consisted of death penalty supporters; the other of opponents.

The death penalty study was fake. Researchers had tweaked the numbers so that some members of each group would read a study that concluded the death penalty was effective, while others would read a slightly different study that concluded the death penalty didn't work.

“When the study confirmed the subject's beliefs – a pro-death penalty subject read a version of the report that showed the death penalty worked, for example – they thought the study was well done methodologically,” said Mark Frank, an associate professor of communication at State University of New York in Buffalo. “But when it disconfirmed their beliefs, they felt it was methodologically flawed.”

Emotional content

Emotion, too, plays a big role in memory formation and retention. If new information triggers a powerful emotional response, particularly fear or disgust, it becomes more memorable.

“Memories aren't created equal,” said Wang at Princeton. “Some are more salient. They're stickier. This may be why negative campaigning is so effective.”

Take, for example, one of the most persistent falsehoods of this presidential campaign, that Obama is a secretly practicing Muslim.

The allegation was first made by a man named Andy Martin in a press release issued in 2004. Martin – an oft-thwarted would-be politician with a history of making unsubstantiated allegations – presented no evidence. He simply claimed his assertion to be true based upon his own research and conclusions.

However dubious the source, Martin's Muslim claim was quickly picked up and promoted by Obama opponents, repeated and expanded over the years in water-cooler conversations, e-mail messages, Web sites and books.

It isn't true. Obama is Christian. But the Muslim allegation resonates with many Americans, say observers, because it feeds into a more general, visceral fear of terrorism and its perceived agents. Despite years of denials by Obama, polls show that one in 10 Americans still think he's Muslim.

Replacing or eradicating such false beliefs or memories is difficult. For one thing, people naturally focus on the information, not the disclaimer, say experts. A politician falsely accused may quickly counter with forceful rebuttals, said Wang, but in repeating the original misinformation, he may also be unconsciously reinforcing it.

“Simply telling people that a piece of information is false does not seem to help them remember that it is false,” added Markman at the University of Texas. “It's important to give people an explanation for why the fact was false.”

But how do you avoid remembering something incorrectly in the first place?

“That's hard to do,” said Wang. “Typically, controversial things come with mixed evidence.

“The best way to avoid assimilating false evidence (and thus creating false memories) is to think critically. Make a mental argument for the other side. Consider the opposite possibilities. Doing so isn't really a part of ordinary human nature, but it can really clear things up.”

But Scheibe at the University of Connecticut said it may not be possible to ignore outlandish statements completely. “Reports of things like the Loch Ness monster or of UFOs are believed because the fantastic is fascinating and more dramatically interesting than the facts of ordinary life.”

It's always easier to remember the unbelievable, he said.

It's much harder to remember it cannot be believed.

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