{"id":15007,"date":"2012-05-10T11:34:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T16:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15007"},"modified":"2012-06-27T09:04:30","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T14:04:30","slug":"megan-mcardle-on-eyewitness-accuracy-bullying-and-the-failures-of-human-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/10\/megan-mcardle-on-eyewitness-accuracy-bullying-and-the-failures-of-human-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Megan McArdle on “eyewitness” accuracy, bullying, and the failures of human memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a fascinating series of Twitter updates, Megan McArdle<\/a> discusses the inherent problems we encounter when we depend on eyewitness testimony, especially long after the event. This is a long series of separate entries starting with this one<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s heartwarming to see all these journalists and twitterers who never did anything morally wrong in high school.<\/p>\n

I mean, most of the high school students I knew were pretty much selfish and immoral herd beasts. But maybe things were different elsewhere.<\/p>\n

[Responding to a comment from @jbouie] No, just saying that it’s not really backed up. You and I both know what the quality of eyewitness evidence is when given . . . immediately, and by the time it’s 50 years old and delivered in re a presidential election . . . the Swift Boaters had more . . . eyewitnesses who corroborated that Kerry was “lying”. Wouldn’t exactly be surprised to find that those who remember . . . Romney as ringleader were maybe not planning to vote for Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

I don’t think they’re lying as much as motivated cognition plus memory from 50 years ago is not reliable. Dito swiftboaters.<\/p>\n

I don’t even think that’s only explanation; just think I can’t reliably distinguish from “they’re remembering accurately”<\/p>\n

Note: I actually watched lots of formerly bullied girls become bullies themselves in girls’ camp when social dynamic of cabin . . . shifted for some reason. In most cases difference between bullied and bullies was group support\/encouragement, not . . . some fundamental difference in their character. I never saw a bullied girl turn down the opportunity to bully someone else.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

[in response to @pjdoland] I am sure that many of my bullies have forgotten it. I don’t think they’re sociopaths. I think they’re humans who grew up.<\/p>\n

All the research on memory shows that it’s incredibly unreliable, and very easy to create factitious memories . . . that seem perfectly real. The odds that either Kerry or the Swift Boat vets accurately recalled what happened are zero.<\/p>\n

And people who come out of the woodwork decades later with memories that impeach a presidential candidate are almost . . . certainly, either individually or as a group, altering those memories in ways that help the candidate they like.<\/p>\n

. . . or they are embellishing memories. Seriously, this is a huge problem with eyewitness testimony, particularly in old trials.<\/p>\n

If you tell people what happened, they will report it as if they recall it–they will in fact recall it.<\/p>\n

A personal example: my mother was in hospital for an undiagnosed abdominal ailment that turned out to be appendicitis.<\/p>\n

I spent the worst 13 hours of my life in the ER with her and would have sworn that it was seared—seared!–into my memory.<\/p>\n

But as it happened, I kept a record of what was happening in RT, in case I wanted to write about it. (Fucking journalists, right?)<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, I’d forgotten most of the stuff on the list. Some of it came back to me when I read it.<\/p>\n

Some of it I still have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. (I googled snoring? Why?) Memory is not what we think.<\/p>\n

It’s a narrative that is constantly being recreated as we tell it, not a record.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The malleability of memory is something that none of us particularly want to face up to: we like to think of ourselves as reliable witnesses to our own lives, yet the evidence is that we are very much not. Some of us are a bit better at accurate recollection, while others consciously remember things as they should have happened<\/em> instead of how they actually happened.<\/p>\n

This, of course, should require us to move the entire “history” section over into the “fiction” part of the mental library…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a fascinating series of Twitter updates, Megan McArdle discusses the inherent problems we encounter when we depend on eyewitness testimony, especially long after the event. This is a long series of separate entries starting with this one: It’s heartwarming to see all these journalists and twitterers who never did anything morally wrong in high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,53,16],"tags":[828,188,267,806,139,504],"class_list":["post-15007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","category-science","tag-bullying","tag-electionwatch","tag-justice","tag-mittromney","tag-psychology","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3U3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15698,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007\/revisions\/15698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}