Memory is probably the most studied element in psychology. It’s no wonder we’ve learnt so much about memory and the process of forgetting, and that psychology has discovered so many interesting things about the two.
There might be some things you didn’t know about your mind and your memory.
We tend to remember unfinished jobs easier than those that were finished. In psychology, it is called “the Zeigarnik effect”, and it implies that an unaccomplished business will remain in our heads longer than a completed task.
That’s because we live a certain dissonance if we don’t finish our jobs, because it’s human nature to finish something that we started.
Bluma Zeigarnik was a Russian psychologist that noticed in a restaurant that waiters remembered faster the unfinished orders and they had a tendency to return to the tables of those who didn’t decide yet, forgetting of their other clients.
Another interesting fact about our brains is the “Google effect”, named after the famous search engine, which refers to the tendency of people to forget things that they know they could easily find online.
It’s also called “digital amnesia”.
The third fact about memory is that we tend to remember our accomplishments as being more important than they really were.
For example, if we organized a chill birthday party, we will probably remember it like a crazy party, or we will remember the little fish we caught a few years ago a lot bigger than it was in reality.
Psychology shows that we do this because we want to be more valuable and competent than we are in reality, to keep our self-esteem at an optimum lever.
But wait, there’s more! Have you ever heard of the “illusion of truth” effect? It says that people tend to approve on something if they heard about it before.
As a conclusion, we are more likely to believe something that we are familiar with, even if it’s not really true, rather than believing something that we never heard before.
The last interesting fact about our brains is a common one and you have probably heard about it. The fact shows that we tend to remember unusual elements of a row easier.
For example, in a row with 9 number and one letter, it will be easy for us to remember the letter.
That explains why odd jokes are preferred by the public, or why weird behavior of people sticks in our heads for a while.