The Memory Hole - Problems with free recall..

For those who have read George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece “1984”, you might particularly remember the ‘Ministry of Truth’, the most important agency of the despotic government of Oceania, housed in a sprawling Pyramid shaped building having 3000 rooms each, above and below the ground. And inside the Ministry sits an employee named Winston Smith whose job is to meticulously manufacture lies that depict the party’s latest version of reality and all older versions are dumped and destroyed in what is known as the ‘Memory hole’ ( including removal of words from language in order to limit people’s ability to think) . In other words, Smith ‘revises’ history and adjusts it to support a pre-set agenda – a theme that has been practiced down the ages by many masterful Machiavellian school of politicians to strengthen and lengthen their reigns.

Memory is indeed a funny country. As modern managers, we are always reminded that the best way to lay out a concept is by crafting it in the form of a story, simply because - stories, for their emotional framework, are easier to retain than cold facts. This is obviously true and we often say that we forget events, but we don’t forget the specific emotions that each event left us with. And when we try to recall a certain emotion from the past, we also download a set of memories associated with that emotion ( Say – For Mumbai-ites, when you heard of the 26/11 attacks having started in your city , what were you doing ? Chances are, you shall accurately remember where you were , and also , if asked to, you can narrate a series of emotions you went through after hearing about the tragic and scary event). Uric Neisser, referred to as the ‘Father of Cognitive Psychology’, had conducted an experiment to demonstrate why ‘Flashbulb memories ’, as they are called, may be very flawed after all. Using a sample group to recall their thoughts after hearing about the ‘Challenger’ tragedy, and repeating his exercise with the same group some years later, he proved how differently each participant recounted his / her experience after a time lag , thus establishing that many of our established mind maps might be severely defective after all. Because, like Winston Smith’s ‘manufactured’ history, our memories too undergo involuntary manipulations and keep getting revised over time , leaving us with impressions that are defective, and almost fictional.

The issues with memory don’t end there.

Say you take over a new role as a manager and are reading dossiers of two of your direct reports from notes of your predecessor. In the summary section, A is described as  industrious, witty, cynical , judgmental and headstrong. B is described as judgmental, cynical, headstrong, witty & industrious. Chances are, at first glance, you might take a liking towards A, although the attributes describing both A and B, are exactly the same, the difference being merely in the arrangement of words. ‘Primacy Effect’, as this is known as, is yet another problem with memory, that causes us to make wrong conclusions based on first impressions. This is what makes us fall for flashy sales pitches of real estate salesmen and choose wrong partners by forming opinions on a handful of first cut externals. This is what causes examiners to go lenient while marking papers of students whose first answer is very impressive ( although whose subsequent answers might be mediocre) , and also what promotes a faulty culture of celebrating extroverts simply because they speak first in a group, even when they don’t always say the right things. The other extreme of the ‘Primacy Effect’ defect is the ‘ Recency Effect’, a cognitive error we sometimes make, by being partial to an impression that is more recent. Paradoxically, unlike what the ‘Primacy Effect’ does to examiners, the ‘Recency Effect’ often does the reverse in the case of managers evaluating performances of employees, or CEOs concluding score cards of businesses, by becoming more generous towards the ones whose most recent performance has been good , conveniently forgetting ones that have delivered consistently in all past cycles and faltered only in the last quarter before the review.

The most interesting errors of Primacy and Recency effects are observed in job interviews. Say, you are a candidate with all the right ticks in your resume, but you arrive late for an interview. Here, even if you give a great interview, the Primacy Effect might cause the interviewer to reject you. On the other hand, suppose you arrive on time AND also give a good interview, but accidentally mess up your response to the last question and get perceived wrongly at the final step, the Recency Effect might cost you the job.

In conclusion, in our understanding of the four stages of memory - Soaking in (sensory), Processing, Consolidating and Storing - we often forget the fifth and the most important aspect of memory, Forgetting.

This singular ability of humans allows us to discard useless and faulty impressions from our minds and opens up space for new decisions in the vast (but limited nevertheless) processor inside our heads.

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From my 2017 Blog Archives

(Acknowledgment - Thanks Rolf Dobeli for being a wonderful source of anecdotes that filter the ocean of information out there & sharpen our reading list).