Skip to main content

The Seven Sins of Memory- Book Review & Resources

 

The Seven Sins

  of Memory

By

Daniel L. Schacter     

 

Reviewed by

  Geoffrey W. Sutton




Schacter’s Seven Sins of Memory is like a fine seven course meal. Each course serves up an interesting collection of research that’s easy to read by the general public and pleasantly presented, yet rich with enough details to appeal to scholars and practitioners. I left feeling satisfied.

Every mental health clinician and all who work with people should read about the seven sins of memory and come back to it when they wonder about memory complaints or detect discrepancies in recall.

Students will find it helpful too as Schacter weaves psychological science into meaningful stories—a good example of how to write about psychological science for nonpsychology majors.

I must say that I found the notion of “sins” strange—is this a psychology of religion book? I suppose it could be. Afterall, religious scholar Craig Keener included a discussion of memory in his book about the Gospels and the Life of Christ. However, the sins of memory are the problems with human memory—problems that can deceive us and lead to inaccurate conclusions. We can miss the mark and we may need forgiveness.

I’d like to suggest a title: Memory: Seven Reasons for Humility. But then again, I’m not a best selling author or a famous psychological scientist.

**********

There’s so much in this book. In this post, I will just note some of the key features of each chapter so you get a sense of what this is all about.

Problems of Forgetting

1. The Sin of Transience

We forget names and other things as time passes. Memory fades. Memories are fleeting- transient. We have less mental reserve as we age. How much we remember is linked to how much we elaborate on new information when forming a new memory (encoding).

2. The Sin of Absent-Mindedness

When we are distracted, we may not capture sufficient information to form an adequate memory—we are absent-minded. We can also be distracted, which can  lead to impaired recall of a memory. The phenomenon of change blindness fits here too.

3. The Sin of Blocking

Name blocking is so common and serves as a quintessential example of blocking. Sometimes, information seems like it’s on the tip-of-the-tongue – a well-known phenomenon in memory research.

When Memory is Present but Wrong

4. The Sin of Attribution

We can make errors in recall when our memories store misattributions. This can be serious when people falsely accuse someone of a crime because they have seen someone else’s familiar face and stored it along with the offense. Psychologists refer to memory binding—connecting various bits of information into a memory, which isn't really a record of our personal experience.

5. The Sin of Suggestibility

The questions we ask can influence what people recall when they provide answers. Questions are so powerful that people have recalled events that never happened. Suggestibility can create false memories. Obviously this can, and in fact has been, a serious problem when witnesses to a crime are interviewed about what they saw or heard. Not surprisingly, Schacter refers to the work of Elizabeth Loftus.

 

6. The Sin of Bias

Our memories can be influenced by present experiences. We tend to recall the past in ways that are consistent (consistency and change biases) with our present. 

Current knowledge influences what we think about the past--that's hindsight bias. We serve ourselves well in egocentric biases. 

And our  stereotypical biases combined with recall of memories can affect our views about people and experiences in the present.

Schacter includes a useful analysis of the power of fake news to influence our beliefs. Mere repetition appears to strengthen beliefs in fake news (the illusory truth effect).

 Persistence and Distressful Memories

7. The Sin of Persistence

When memories persist, we can re-experience pain and humiliation. Emotional experiences act to highlight certain experiences and not others. Emotions can also impair what we remember about an event when we focused on the threat and did not perceive other details of the event. Thus, because we focused on the threat, our memories are incomplete. Our current mood can influence the nature of memories we recall.

The Seven Sins: Vices or Virtues

In Vices and Virtues, Schacter suggests ideas about how our problems with memory may have developed. And he cites some evidence suggesting how our problems may be beneficial that is, virtues. For example, the gradual fading of some memories can relieve us of the burden of nonuseful details and may even lessen the pain of bad experiences. Even trauma can serve us when it allows us to avoid similar painful situations in the future.

**********

I praised the book at the beginning and conclude with a clear statement that I recommend this book. I say this as a psychologist with years of experience testing the memories of children and adults in clinical practice and for the courts. I have also consulted in numerous cases of people claiming disability due to memory impairment.

I suggested a different title: Memory: Seven Reasons for Humility. In addition to the applications suggested by Schacter, I add a lesson in humility. Even those blessed with the best brains must deal with the common problem that our memories can lead us astray thus, a dose of humility in warranted. Though some people are undoubtedly out to deceives us and spin their misdeeds into golden memories, others are simply mistaken. Great interviewers will be mindful of the frailties and strengths of human memory. And many of us will need forgiveness.

Our memories are precious. Without adequate memories, we lose a sense of self-identity—who are we without a memory?

_____________

Cite this review

Sutton, G. W. (2022). The sevens sins of memory: Book review & resources. SuttonReviews. Retrieved from https://suttonreviews.suttong.com/2022/01/the-seven-sins-of-memory-book-review.html

 _____________

Book Reference

Schacter, D. L. (2021). The seven sins of memory: How the mind forgets and remembers, updated edition. New York: Mariner. (Kindle Edition)

Book details: 532 pages, Preface to the updated edition, Introduction, 7 chapters- one each for the 7 sins, A final reflections/ideas chapter, notes, bibliography, end material.

About the book author

Daniel L. Schacter is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

Available as

eBook

Audiobook

Paperback

___________________________

Please check out my website   www.suttong.com

   and see my books on   AMAZON       or  GOOGLE STORE

Also, consider connecting with me on    FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton    

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton    

You can read many published articles at no charge:

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton     ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton 

 ___________________________

Related works

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann

Christobiography: Memory, history, and the reliability of the gospels by Craig Keener.

The myth of repressed memory by Elizabeth Loftus & Katherine Ketcham

The malleability of memory with Elizabeth Loftus by Howard Burton

Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton

 

Daniel Schacter on The Seven Sins of Memory on YouTube






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Denial of Death and the Meaningful Life- Book Review

  The Denial of Death   by Ernest Becker A Review by Geoffrey W. Sutton The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.  — Ernest Becker, xvii I completed a recent reading of this old classic yesterday (13 December, 2015) because I was interested in Becker’s contribution to Terror Management Theory, which I find so helpful in understanding the ways U.S. leaders are publicly responding to terrorist activities. Becker’s ideas are more than forty years old and many have not withstood the test of time. However, his basic premise that we deny the reality of death in many ways remains valid

JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE - A book review

  JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE How White Evangelicals        Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation By    Kristin Kobes Du Mez Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton   Kristin Kobes Du Mez begins and ends her assault on militaristic white American evangelical men with their contemporary sociopolitical leader, former president, Donald Trump. In the Introduction we learn the short doctrinal list of what it means to be a Bible-believing evangelical, but the author posits that American evangelicals are more than a set of theological statements. Instead, since the early 1900s they have embraced a John Wayne view of what it means to be a Christian man—a powerful warrior for country and God—a man who leads his troops into battle to uphold the values of God’s chosen people, the Americans. It was the title, Jesus and John Wayne , that was off-putting. I didn’t grow up with John Wayne films or a love of American westerns. I was after all British and even after living in America, we

WILLPOWER Setting & Reaching Goals- Book Review by Sutton

WILLPOWER Rediscovering the Greatest    Human Strength By Roy Baumeister & John Tierney Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton I go to a gym, which is crowded in January. Regulars know the early Happy-New-Year commitments to fitness will weaken sometime in February. Roy Baumeister has spent a good part of his career studying self-control. His book, Willpower   written with Tierney,  entertains and informs us with an organized set of findings explaining factors that influence self-control. Two critical factors weaken our judgments: food and sleep. We need glucose and sleep to be at our best when it comes to making wise decisions and marking progress toward our goals. A pretty woman can loosen a man’s grip on his career--we hear these news stories from time to time as one political group takes aim at each other's leaders--men who failed at sexual self-control and sadly blame women for their lack of self-control. Fat shaming happens. T