Our expectations or desires have a major influence on what and how we remember. This matter has not been a scientific secret for many years, but still Why do we have such false memories and memories? The matter is still not fully clarified.

This does not only apply to complex events that we call ‘memory’, which usually appear in our long-term memory with a certain sequence of events. According to recent research at the University of Amsterdam, this is a problem also for shorter and simpler things even for our memory.

Our short-term memory is also shaped by what we expect to see, namely our wishes. Our expectations even manipulate our memory within 1-2 seconds:

According to the results of the investigation “illusions of short-term memory” or the scientific abbreviation STM This phenomenon, which is supposedly called, can make us remember something wrong even in a matter of seconds. The interaction we have with our environment, our perception, our psychological state and the fact that we never lived can cause false memories to be formed. Like remembering putting the phone on the table and finding it in the kitchen, or remembering putting the keys in your pocket and realizing you left them at home…

PLOS This is how the results of the latest research in the scientific publication, titled, address the problems of our daily and short-term memory. While it’s no secret that long-term memories are normally shaped by expectations, this research shows that our expectations can even influence our short-term memory.

Let’s shed some more light on the subject for the curious:

Scientists conducted 4 different experiments to understand this situation. Participants in the first experiment a simple visual memory test They were subjected to: Mirrored versions of the sequence were shown, with 6 to 8 blocks of 1 or 2 letters arranged in a circle.

In the second experiment, a second set of circles came into play to distract the participants. Then the clusters are shown in the first circle, sorting without cheating, and during sorting indicate how confident they are in their decision requested. Meanwhile, none of the participants knew that the circles were mirrored. However, in their responses, almost all participants said they were confident that the statements they remembered did not reflect.

This showed that the participants’ memories were formed as a result of the experiences they had throughout their lives, not the visual quality of what they saw. In other words, participants who spent years with non-mirrored versions of letters in the alphabet created their mirrored versions in their heads as non-mirrored.