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memory
Your brain fills in gaps with events that never happened.
A 1996 study found that simply imagining a past event increases the participant's confidence that the event actually occurred.
This is imagination inflation. Every time you mentally simulate a memory, your brain embeds the imagery into your existing framework of past experiences. You cannot distinguish between what you remember and what you recently imagined.
The history you tell yourself is constantly being rewritten.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman, 1996
- What the check found
- The 1996 study by Garry et al. is the foundational research for the imagination inflation phenomenon, and the claim accurately reflects its core finding regarding increased confidence.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.