« Oh, Mr. Sheffield.......... | Main | Our RSN Can Beat Up Their RSN »
January 16, 2007
Trust Me, We Remember It
From Mmegi Online -
False memories, memories that you believe to be true, but have in fact never happened, have been a topic of psychological research for some time. A recent special issue of the journal Memory looked at false memories and how our brains may have a detection system for filtering out memories that it feels have been distorted.
In the recent issue of Memory, they looked at such processing of memories in our brains. The issue, edited by James M. Lampinen and Timothy N. Odegard of the University of Texas in the United States, featured various studies on the processing and editing of memories including false memories.
Lampinen and Odegard themselves have done research proving that although our brain does occasionally create false memories, sometimes quite detailed and vivid false memories, our brain also has some checks and balances. It appears that our brains also filter out memories that it finds might be false. This is called recollection rejection.
In another recent study looking at false memories and distorted memories, Elizabeth Kensinger at Harvard University found that our memory is also affected by our emotions and our feelings about what we are witnessing. Two people looking at an event, but having opposite emotions about what they are witnessing will go away with two completely different sets of memories about it.
She studied 76 people who had attended a baseball game in 2004, the league playoff game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees in which the Red Sox won. Kensinger's study focused on personal memories, for example what they ate at the game or what clothes they were wearing, and on event details, which included memories about the game.
She found that for memories about personal details, both Yankee fans and Red Sox fans remembered things equally well, but for event details including memories about the game, the losers, the Yankees fans, had better memories of the event. What this showed was that memory distortion for event-details is affected by the person's emotions and that negative emotions seemed to enhance the person's ability to have clear, non-distorted memories.
Either that, or, Yankees fans are just smarter than Red Sox fans, right?
Posted by Steve Lombardi at January 16, 2007 11:35 AM
Comments
We're better looking, too :)
Posted by: Raf ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.waswatching.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 16, 2007 12:33 PM
Let's not forget 'classier'. ;-)
Posted by: Pete at January 16, 2007 01:01 PM
I remember there was a big earthquake in '04. So devestating that they had to call off the WS and the rest of the playoffs -- damn shame what with the Yankees up 3 games to none vs. Boston.
Right?
Posted by: rbj at January 16, 2007 01:43 PM
I'm telling you guys, the more I look at the pitching staffs of the '04 Sox and the '04 Yanks, the more I want to say that the real choke of the 2004 ALCS was on Boston for losing the first three games.
Boston's team ERA+ was 116 in 2004. The Yankees team ERA+ was 96 that year. That was the 2nd best pitching in the league against the 9th best pitching in the league. It's not even close.
Posted by: Steve Lombardi at January 16, 2007 02:01 PM
You want crazy, look at the pythagorean win total for the 04 Yanks... 89 wins, to the 101 they actually won.
But still, the Yanks had an opportunity to win the series. Offensively, you had the two best offenses in the league.
Quickly researching, I can't come up with a postseason matchup that had two teams that were so far apart (20 pts) on ERA+
Posted by: Raf at January 16, 2007 02:19 PM
[T]he more I want to say that the real choke of the 2004 ALCS was on Boston for losing the first three games.
---------------------------------------
Hardly relevant. Had the Yanks actually managed to win the series, this might be a valid point. But since the Yanks had the Red Sox down and then pissed away four straight games, the Yanks are the only chokers in the bunch. Yes, the Red Sox were the better team but who cares? The Yanks not only let the better team win but they let them do it in Cinderella fashion.
No offense Steve, but I think repeating that point of view only makes the Yanks (or their fans) look like sore losers grasping at rationalizations for why it went down the way it did.
Posted by: MJ at January 16, 2007 03:29 PM
Hey, show me a good loser and, well, you know. {wink}
Posted by: Steve Lombardi at January 16, 2007 03:51 PM