Functional, Reliable and Adaptive Memory Errors

Objective

Decades of research have demonstrated that autobiographical memory is highly malleable: simple conversation can reshape memories or even plant entirely false memories of events that never happened. This malleability is a seemingly universal feature of the human condition. Despite this, false memories are generally regarded as – at best – a side effect of a flexible memory system. FRAME will explore a radically different possibility: that the construction of false memories is functional and adaptive in and of itself. Cognitive psychologists are preoccupied with memory accuracy, such that deviations from accuracy are referred to in our theoretical memory models as errors, distortions, and failures. However, memory did not evolve to act as a recording device. It evolved under the same selective pressures as anything else in the natural world - survival and reproduction. In many situations, there may be a functional and adaptive tendency to sacrifice accuracy in favour of another outcome, such as improved wellbeing or social cohesion. FRAME will develop a functional account of false memories using largely experimental methods – manipulating memory in unconventional ways and often flipping standard false memory paradigms so that downstream benefits of false memories can be tested. FRAME will experimentally test how memory malleability may allow us to be happier in ourselves (Q1) and to integrate more effectively within our social groups (Q2), but memory accuracy may be prioritised for survival-related information (Q3). FRAME will also explore how we can investigate and harness functional false memories in an ethical way (Q4) and will culminate in a new model of false memories (Q5). Empirical evidence for this functional account of false memories would represent a paradigm-shift in the way we think about human memory, reframing our bugs as features. This project has the potential to promote a profound transformation in how we think about memory... flaws and all.