Our memories are imperfect, but that doesn\u2019t mean „the past is unknowable.“<\/b>
\nWith her memory of an alleged sexual assault in the 1980s, Christine Blasey Ford has upended the Supreme Court nomination process and ignited a flurry of media attention and discussion on sexual assault, power, and politics.
As we learned Sunday when she came forward, Ford, now a professor at Palo Alto University, has a clear memory of one summer night when a teenage Brett Kavanaugh groped her, pinned her down, and covered her mouth as she tried to scream. Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court nominee, denies these claims.
In the last few days, people sympathetic to Kavanaugh \u2014 like conservative political commentators and Fox News hosts \u2014 have been focusing on the question of whether Ford\u2019s memories could be accurate.
\u201cHuman memory is notoriously unreliable, especially over time,\u201d Fox News\u2019s Tucker Carlson said on his program . \u201cPast a certain point, the past is unknowable.\u201d As my colleague Alvin Chang has explained, Fox has been keen on mentioning her claims in the context of memory more than the other cable news networks.
But it\u2019s not just Fox News casting doubt on Ford\u2019s memory. Over at the National Review, writer David French takes issue with how her current recollections diverge slightly from those in 2012 notes from her therapist. The notes say four boys were involved in the incident. Ford told the Washington Post there were two. \u201cThat suggests that her memory of the event may be suspect,\u201d French writes.
There is a kernel of truth to this: Human memory is notoriously faulty. It\u2019s a pervasive, frustrating human flaw, one that has led to false convictions, false confessions, and the misidentification of perpetrators in a police lineup.
But the fact that some of our memories can evolve or be manipulated by new information or suggestion doesn\u2019t mean all memories are junk. It doesn\u2019t mean Ford is misremembering Kavanaugh as her assailant. Memory experts say it makes sense that some details of her recollections may have changed, while the central trauma of the story \u2014 and who perpetrated it \u2014 did not.
The science of memory is frustrating. Here\u2019s what we know about it.
The first thing to know about human memory is that it\u2019s prone to error.
\u201cDistortion is a fairly ordinary feature of human memory,\u201d Steven Frenda, a psychologist who researches false memory at Cal State Los Angeles, says in an email. \u201cEven people who have otherwise extraordinary memory abilities do not appear to be completely immune to the effects of suggestion. So I wouldn\u2019t be surprised at all to learn that details of her memory could have changed over time, even if her gist is accurate.\u201d
Details do change, he says: \u201cI don\u2019t think that we should discard someone\u2019s entire account because we find evidence of some distortion or inconsistency.\u201d
Often after traumatic incidents, some parts are dwelled upon and can even get exaggerated over time, while other parts become muddied. But the central event can be recalled with accuracy.
\u201cOne of the most replicated findings in the emotion and memory literature is that people tend to remember central features of events that were important to them \u2014 the gist of the event\u2026 fairly accurately and for a relatively long period of time,\u201d Linda Levine, who studies the intersection of memory and emotion at the University of California Irvine, says in an email. \u201cThey make more errors in remembering peripheral details that were less important to them.\u201d
For instance, in a memory of a traumatic event, the assault and the perpetrator are likely to be the central feature, well-crystallized. Whoever else was in the room may not.
As a 2015 paper in Frontiers in Psychiatry points out, this dwelling on the central details of a memory may lead people to reexperience them. And this is an ingredient that leads to post-traumatic stress.
But it\u2019s also true that when dwelling or rehashing a memory, we change or exaggerate it. When we call on a memory, we have to piece it back together. Some of what ends up in our recollection is the truth. But there\u2019s a laziness, a bias, in our recollections.
In reconstructing our memories, our brains often grab the easiest bit of information to recall. And information that we\u2019ve learned since the event will be added to fill in memory gaps. This is something we all do, unknowingly. And the nature of memory is that we forget we ever remembered a situation differently.
That\u2019s why mere suggestions, like being told cars \u201csmashed\u201d instead of \u201chit\u201d after viewing a video of a car crash, will lead people to recall the crash being more severe than it was. Or why our memories for feelings of significant historical events \u2014 like the O. J. Simpson murder trial \u2014 tend to reflect what we think today rather than what we felt back then.
The lesson of memory research is not that, as Carlson says, \u201cpast a certain point, the past is unknowable.\u201d
The lesson is more nuanced. It\u2019s that our intuitions about how our memories work are often wrong. Memory is not a crystalline videotape. Memory is more like a video editor, working on a tight, shortcut-driven deadline.
Whatever conclusions we draw from memory research to try to understand Ford\u2019s accusations are going to be unsatisfying. Human memory is faulty enough that not everyone who puts forth a statement ought to be believed point-blank. It\u2019s also good enough that people who experience trauma ought to be believed.
The best conclusions we can reach are equivocal. \u201cEyewitness misidentifications are known to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the US,\u201d Frenda says. \u201cI know of countless cases in which this occurred.\u201d
Truth often requires efforts that go beyond memory and testimony. That\u2019s why some are calling for the FBI to investigate the case. \u201cInvestigators would at least be able to evaluate evidence and interview witnesses in a structured and presumably private way,\u201d Vox\u2019s Anna North writes . \u201cAbsent that, what we\u2019re left with is a hodgepodge of vague information \u2014 and misinformation \u2014 that does more harm than good.\u201d
I worry that the focus on the veracity of her memory is a distraction from a larger point, a more important trend that helps explain why Ford is speaking out now.
Ford is a woman who has pushed herself into a massive spotlight to make a charge against someone who wants a seat in the highest-ranking judicial institution in the land. She\u2019s facing death threats. Reportedly, her family has moved out of their home out of fear. Her reluctance to initially come forward was warranted. Not because her memory isn\u2019t perfect. But because what she has to say invites danger.
Too often, women have been silenced or too terrified to make such an accusation. The push, post-#MeToo, to \u201cbelieve women\u201d is not because these women possess super-computer clarity of memory. It\u2019s because, for so long, their claims have gone unheard. And there\u2019s truth to be found just by turning on this long-clogged faucet.<\/p>\n

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