1. We Can’t Judge The Accuracy Of Our Own Memories
Recall is a lot like a game of telephone where we whisper something from “our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time,” wrote psychology professors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in a popular New York Times op-ed. “We only ‘hear’ the most recent version of the message, and we may assume that what we believe now is what we always believed.” Until someone or something challenges us, we have no reason to think a memory is anything less than perfect. The problem, in critical situations like courtroom testimony, is not that we forget details; it’s that we don’t realize we forgot them.