Distortion in the perception of the choice made

The tendency to remember their decisions is better than they actually were, when people tend to attribute more positive traits to the opportunities that they have chosen, and negative traits to other options. ^[one]

Experiments in cognitive science and social psychology have revealed a wide range of deviations in areas such as statistical evidence, social attribution, and memory. ^{[2] A} memory distortion that supports choice is thought to occur during a memory search and results from the belief that “I chose this option, so it should be a better choice.” In addition, it is possible that the choice is auxiliary memories and arise when the individual only pays attention to certain information when making a decision or in post-election cognitive dissonance . ^[4] In addition, prejudices can also arise because they are closely related to high-level cognitive operations and complex social interactions. ^{[5] The} distortion of memory is sometimes intentional, because it may be in our interests not to remember some details about the event or to forget them altogether. ^[6]

The purpose of the selection, as a rule, is to choose the best option. Thus, making a choice, a person is likely to believe that the chosen option was better than the rejected options. Each choice has positive and negative sides. The decision-making process relies heavily on previous experience. Thus, a person will remember not only the decision made, but also the rationale for making such a decision.

Motivation

Motivation can also play a role in this process, because when a person remembers the option that he has chosen as the best, this should help reduce regret about his choice. This can be a positive illusion that contributes to well-being.

Cases that a person does not control

There are cases when a person does not always control the choice made for himself. People often end up with options that were not chosen by them, but were assigned by others, for example, work assignments assigned by superiors, or places of rest chosen by other family members. ^[7] However, the choice, being assigned (by chance or not), brings to mind the experience, which, as a rule, stands for an alternative to the option not received, which may lead to regret and disappointment. ^[eight]

• Assigned options : a choice made for you by other people in your interests may cause memory attributions that support that choice. ^[7] But current experiments do not show distortion in the perception of the choice made for the assigned options. Nevertheless, the choice that is made on behalf of a person in his interests, really shows a tendency to distort in the memory of the perception of choice.
• Random option : people have no distortion in the perception of the choice made, when the choice is made randomly for them. ^[9] This is because the distortion in the perception of the choice made, as a rule, occurs during the act of making a decision.

The understanding of the situation that people have is formed by memories of the choices they make; one university or job is selected, while other options are rejected. Recollections of the choice made, as well as rejected alternatives, can affect a person’s sense of well-being. Regretting the not accepted option can cast a shadow, while satisfaction with the right choice can make a good result. ^[ten]

Positive Illusions

Distortion in the perception of the choice made often leads to memories that portray the person in an overly favorable light. In general, cognitive prejudice weakens our grip in fact, because the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred if the brain is not able to recall a specific event. Positive illusions are usually moderate and play an important role in our sense of well-being. However, we all need to know that they exist within the framework of human nature. ^[five]

Human beings are endowed with intelligence and a complex mind that allows us to remember our past, can optimize the present and make plans for the future. Remembering involves a complex interaction between the current environment that everyone expects to remember and what is preserved from the past. ^[5] The brain mechanisms that allow us to store and search data in memory serve us well most of the time, but sometimes they cause a person anxiety.

Changing memories over time

There is now much evidence that the contents of memory can go through systematic changes. After a period of time, if data stored in memory is often not used, it can be forgotten.

• Preservation of memory : It is recognized that preservation is best for the experience that is pleasant, the experiences that are unpleasant and the experience that is neutral are less preserved, the worst preserved. Shared memories provide the basis for conclusions that may lead to distortion. These distortions do not appear in the memory in order to supplant specific memories of the individual, but rather they complement and fill in the gaps when the memories are lost. ^[11] It has been shown that a wide range of strategic and systematic processes are used to activate various areas of the brain in order to obtain information.
• Reliability of memory : People are capable of self-testing memory, in which a person can consider the credibility of the extracted memory, asking himself whether this event is really possible. For example, if a person remembers that he saw a flying pig, he must conclude that it was in a dream, because pigs cannot fly in the real world. Memory does not provide people with perfect reproductions of what happened, it consists only of constructions and reconstructions of what happened. ^[3]

There is ample evidence that the amygdala is involved in the effective effect on memory. ^[12] Emotional arousal, usually based on fright, activates the amygdala and modulates the accumulation of memory data, which occurs in other areas of the brain. The forebrain is one of the goals of the tonsil. The forebrain receives input from the amygdala and calculates the emotional value of the stimulus, forms an emotional response, and transfers it to the cerebral cortex . This can change the way neurons respond to future input of information, and cognitive prejudices, such as distortions in perceptions of choices made, that can influence future decisions.

Stress hormones affect memory

Effects associated with stress hormones, such as adrenaline and glucocorticoids , which mediate effects related to the tonsil. ^[12] This has been shown in experiments with rats, which, when given systemic adrenaline injections while being trained to complete a task, show improved memory during the task. In fact, the stronger the emotions that are tied to memory, the greater the likelihood that a person will remember these events. Thus, if the memory is stored and retrieved properly, it is less likely to be garbled.

PET or MRI can be used to identify various areas of the brain that are activated during a specific memory search.

MRI scan

• True Against False Memories : In one study, subjects were asked to recall a series of events when their brain was monitored by MRI to see which areas would “light up”. When a person remembers more true memories than false ones, a cluster is activated in the brain that encompasses the upper right temporal gyrus and lateral occipital cortex . However, when the opposite happened (when a person remembered more false memories than true ones), activation occurred in the area of ​​the brain where the left islet . ^[13] These results may provide some insight into which areas of the brain are involved in storing memories and then retrieving them.

Studies currently show that when people age, their search process in memory changes. Although memory problems in general are common to all because memory is not perfectly accurate, older people more often than young adults show a distortion in the perception of the choice made.

Brain Aging

Normal aging may be accompanied by peripheral neuropathy in the frontal areas of the brain. Frontal regions help people code or use specific attributes of memory to make initial judgments, control personality and ability to plan events. These areas include memory distortion and regulation of emotions.

Regulation of Emotion

In general, older adults are more likely to remember the emotional aspects of the situation than younger adults. For example, in a characteristic memory questionnaire, older people rated memories of events as having more connected thoughts and feelings than young adults did. As a person grows up, the regulation of their own emotions becomes a higher priority, while the acquisition of knowledge becomes a less powerful motive. Therefore, a distortion in the perception of the choice made arises because their attention was focused on how they felt about the choice, and not on the actual details of the choice. Studies have shown that when young adults are encouraged to recall the emotional aspect of choice, they are more likely to show a distortion in the perception of the choice made. This may be due to a greater tendency of older people to show a positive memory effect.

Hope to meet

Older people more than young people rely on unconditional or general knowledge about the event, so they may not recognize individual elements of the event. ^[1] Older people are also less likely to remember the contextual features of events, such as colors or location. This may be because older people remember (or rely on) fewer sources of identification characteristics than young people. Consequently, older people should more often think or base the answer on less specific information, for example, on acquaintance. ^[14] As a result, if they cannot remember something, they are likely to fill in the missing gaps with things that are familiar to them. ^[five]

Understanding the

Older people rely more on substantive search. A number of studies show that using stereotypes and general knowledge to help recall events is less cognitively demanding than using other types of memory information and thus may require less activity reflecting reality. This shift towards core-based processes can occur as compensation due to age-related impairment in verbal memory. ^[15]

Inhibition

Occasional memory and inhibition explain age-related increases in false memories. Inhibition of memory may be associated with a person’s hearing capacity and concentration. If a person cannot hear what is happening around him or does not pay much attention, the event in memory cannot be properly preserved and, therefore, cannot be accurately restored.

The choice between two used cars

Henkel and Maser investigated the role of beliefs at the time of recollection of the chosen option. They gave the participants several hypothetical options, such as choosing between two used cars. Participants selected several options, returned to the laboratory in a week. The researchers reminded them which options they had chosen and gave them a list of the features of the two options; some new positive and negative features of the options were mixed with old ones. Participants were then asked to indicate whether each option was new, was related to their choice, or was related to the option they rejected. At the same time, they gave one subject those options that they really chose, and the other half opposite. Participants approved the options that Henkel and Maser had told them and “remembered” them. At the same time, positive traits were more likely attributed to the chosen option and negative traits to the rejected option. These results show that beliefs at the time of extraction of the chosen option are formed by the characteristics of the choice and how vividly they are remembered, and a distortion in the perception of the choice made occurs when a person recalls his past choice. ^[four]

Remembering High School

One study shows accuracy and distortion in the memory of high school grades. The relationship between accuracy and distortion of the autobiographical content of the memory was examined by checking 3220 high school marks recalled by 99 college freshmen. It was shown that most of the errors are related to the overestimation of their grades by students, which means that these distortions relate to the reconstruction of memory in a positive and emotionally pleasing direction. In addition, their results show that the distortion process does not actually cause the loss of unpleasant memories of receiving a poor grade. ^[11] This is because no correlation was found between the percent accuracy of the memories and the degree of asymmetry, or distortion. This shows that distortions in the memory of high school grades occur after the content has been forgotten by another mechanism.

50 Year College Study

Многие подобные исследования были проведены, например, пятьдесят летнее исследование запоминания оценок колледжа. В этом исследовании от одного до 54 лет после окончания, 276 выпускников правильно напомнили 3025 из 3967 оценок колледжа. Количество допущенных ошибок увеличилось с интервалом удерживания и лучшие студенты сделали меньше ошибок. Точность отзыва увеличилась с уверенностью в отзыве. Восемьдесят один процент погрешностей в определении оценки это завышение фактической оценки. Опираясь на эти данные можно предположить, что искажения происходят вскоре после окончания колледжа, остаются неизменными в течение интервала хранения в памяти, и тем больше для лучших студентов, которые вспоминали их с удовольствием. Таким образом, где-то в между тем, когда воспоминание в памяти хранится и при извлечении некоторое время спустя, может возникнуть искажение. ^[sixteen]

Участник прослушивал экспериментатора, читающего списки тематически связанных слов (например, таблица, кушетка, лампа, стол), а затем через некоторое время экспериментатор спрашивает, было ли слово представлено в списке. Участники часто сообщают, что связанные с ними, но не произнесенные слова ( например, стул) были включены в серии, по существу предполагая, что они "слышали", что экспериментатор говорил эти непредставленные слова (или критические приманки). Неправильные ответы "да" на критических приманки, часто относимые к ложным воспоминаниям, удивительно высоки в стандартных условиях DRM. ^[17]

Теория когнитивного диссонанса предполагает, что люди имеют мотивацию для того, чтобы уменьшить диссонанс. Искажение в восприятии сделанного выбора, потенциально связанное с другим аспектом когнитивного диссонанса, исследовал Джек Брем (1956), как послевыборный диссонанс. В контексте когнитивного диссонанса, искажение в восприятии сделанного выбора будет рассматриваться как снижение конфликта между "я предпочитаю X" и "Я совершил в Y".

Изучение эффекта Леди Макбет показало снижение искажения в восприятии сделанного выбора, после того как участники помыли руки. То есть с очищением своих рук они избавлялись и от мыслей о правильности принятого решения. ^[18]