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Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Max the Bear - 06-28-2008 04:07 PM
Not AS-specific, but very interesting article from today's New York Times.
The linked text has embedded links.
Your brain lies to you
By Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt
False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.
The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.
This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standings in the polls. [Note: see my meta-analysis of polls from 2004.]
Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like "I think I read somewhere" or even with a reference to a specific source.
In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.
Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.
In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.
Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is false. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears," the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that he is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress his discovery of Christianity in his twenties.
Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a follow-up to the study of students’ impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.
In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.
In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes’s ideal.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Simen - 06-28-2008 04:46 PM
That would explain a lot of things. Earlier today I watched a YouTube video taken (I think) from a tv program by James Randi (he of the foundation and the $1m price to anyone who can prove paranormal phenomena under scientific conditions). Randi explained how his debunking of a bunch of fraudulent "psychics", notably Uri Geller, didn't seem to have any effect on their carreers. Truth isn't sufficient to make it on the idea market, it seems.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - earthmonkey - 06-28-2008 04:56 PM
That's interesting about source amnesia. While I usually forget what (or if) I've eaten that day, in the last week, or about lots of facts that have to do with long-term and short-term memory, for the things that I do remember, when it comes to where, when, and how and with whom I learned something, I tend to have extremely precise memories, with lots of "extraneous" details (I tend to go into monotone monologues for these moments).
So I seem to (for the most part) do the opposite of source amnesia. I often will detail things like the date, the time, the clothes that I or the other person was wearing, what was going on in the background, a food that was being eaten, events around the day, the other things I was thinking about at the time, what music I'd been listening to, and it goes on and on. Usually about four or five precise details about the circumstances I learned something, which are more memorable than the thing I learned (I may not remember the thing I learned until someone else says it, in which case all these associations come pouring in).
I may be the last person to consult about where I left that expensive and/or important thing or the duedate for my term paper, but if you want to know the exact circumstances under which i first learned the word "micro-organism", be prepared for an earful!
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Luai_lashire - 06-28-2008 06:52 PM
Earthmonkey:
That's really cool. One thing scientists seem to be learning more and more is how differently autistics remember things from the way NTs do. It's something I myself would like to study in detail once I have my degree. Quirks like being able to remember what the weather was like on every single day of their entire lives, or some such, are not very common, but are more common in autistics than NTs; other, less dramatic, differences are more common among autistics.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Gareth - 06-28-2008 06:53 PM
http://news.ycombinator.com
Someone's been reading........
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Alias Pseudonym - 06-28-2008 07:07 PM
I tend to run things through a gut 'does that fit with what I know of what the world works' filter. So the paint thinner story would flag as the kind of thing that is very likely to be made up no matter how many times I heard it, even if I couldn't remember the exact source as un-credible. Also, if the information is presented strongly as false the first time, the fact that X is false can become ingrained in the memory without the source in the same way. Although an emotional bias could mess with that, I guess.
I definitely do this once I've heard something though, I decide if it's correct or not but afterward I'll never be able to tell you where I heard it. But I'm always open to changing my mind if you can prove me wrong.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Simen - 06-28-2008 08:26 PM
Gareth Wrote:
http://news.ycombinator.com
Someone's been reading........
Someone's been reading........
Pah. It was on a dozen sites before Hacker News 
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - earthmonkey - 06-29-2008 05:09 AM
Yeah, I guess the way I remember little details about stuff (only when triggered though, can't really access it just whenever), is one reason why when I saw the movie Rain Man I thought, "wow, just like me!"
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - silky - 06-29-2008 08:40 AM
earthmonkey Wrote:
I often will detail things like the date, the time, the clothes that I or the other person was wearing, what was going on in the background, a food that was being eaten, events around the day, the other things I was thinking about at the time, what music I'd been listening to, and it goes on and on. Usually about four or five precise details about the circumstances I learned something, which are more memorable than the thing I learned (I may not remember the thing I learned until someone else says it, in which case all these associations come pouring in).
Same here. I used to be able to recall, without effort, every conversation I had with friends and recite it to them years later, including where they were standing, and surrounding detail, if something close to the topic came up. It was like pulling up a video tape in my head. I didn't suspect it was unusual until several friends expressed astonishment. In fact, I regularly got annoyed when someone retold a joke in an inexact wording or if my husband could not remember the exact conversation he had with me or others in the past. I thought he was pretending not to. It caused plenty of arguments.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - Gareth - 06-29-2008 10:32 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam < I still love this stuff, but recently been mixing it with a product called "ortho-mind" which contains vinpocetine, citicholine, bacopa etc too and the results have been at times going into uber-nostalgic states where I have perfect recall of incidents from years ago popping up constantly.
Having a nicely functioning brain is a wonderful feeling, but what's funny is how close the effects of these substances match savant traits and in some cases reduce socialiastion instinct.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - heterodox - 05-12-2012 07:52 PM
BUMP
In light of some of the discussions here that I've been catching up on recently I thought the topic of this thread is quite relevant.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - mels8780 - 05-13-2012 04:51 AM
Finding something to be false would be more likely imprinted in my mind along with some details on the moment.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - windy - 05-14-2012 02:23 AM
heterodox Wrote:
BUMP
In light of some of the discussions here that I've been catching up on recently I thought the topic of this thread is quite relevant.
In light of some of the discussions here that I've been catching up on recently I thought the topic of this thread is quite relevant.
hey there, long time no post (it seems)
good thread, thanks.
RE: Your Brain Lies to You (Neuroscience) - skyblue1 - 05-14-2012 03:01 AM
< not a fan of MTB
But an interesting article, thanks for the bump