I took my family to see a musical. After it was over, I asked everyone what they liked most about it. My daughter, who plays piano, said that she liked the songs the best. My other daughter, who likes to read, was intrigued by the story. My wife, who is a people person, enjoy watching how the audience reacted to what was happening. They all saw the same musical, but they each were affected by a different aspect of it. Bob LaForge, Upper Room.
As much as my husband and I love to sit on our back porch and share joint memories, we often remember different details about an event or place or person. It’s not that our memories contradict one another; rather, different aspects of any venture plant themselves in our minds. We see what we look for.
He is interested in the scientific, engineering, construction aspect of a subject. I look for the humanities, religious and poetic facets. We both like learning the history of a place or event. Together, we can piece a pretty good story from our joint memories.
Dr. Stephen L. Chew, psychology professor at Samford University says, “Memory doesn’t record our experiences like a video camera. It creates stories based on those experiences.”
Kate Morton in The Clockmaker’s Daughter says, “Of course, a story is not a single idea; it is thousands of ideas, all working together in concert.”
Likewise, our own personal interests and biases affect our observation of any situation. In fact, we often recall what we wanted to see, not what we actually saw. I remember the Easter our daughter was three. When she ran out on the lawn to retrieve the morning paper, she saw a brown rabbit in our yard. Because she had seen it with her own eyes, she was convinced that the Easter Bunny was really brown, not white as all the books and ads displayed. Our own limited knowledge is one reason why actual eye witness accounts are not as reliable as courtroom dramas on television and in movies would have us believe.
Dr. Marianna Pogosyan writing for Psychology Today says, Our desires and goals have an indisputable influence on our lives. As research is demonstrating, these influences taint not only our cognition, emotions, and behavior, but also—quite literally—how we see the world. A ‘response bias’ occurs when we report seeing what we wish to see.”
It’s like one of those automobile games parents play with children on a long trip. Remember the Alphabet Game where we look for items beginning with the letters in order? I recall one trip particularly where we had spotted an Animal, a Bicycle, a Cat, a Dog and we were all searching for an E. Almost immediately, we passed an entry to a house down a lane. And standing sentry on gate posts were two concrete…Elephants. I cannot tell you specifically what our initials findings were nor any sightings after E. I certainly don’t remember the Z sighting. But I can still see those gate posts with elephants.
This ability to see what we set out to see has a name: Frequency Illusion, Recency Illusion or Baader Meinhof Phenomenon. The last name has its own interesting story. Baader Meinhof was a 1970s west Germany terrorist group. As people became aware of it activities, the name popped up everywhere: The Frequency Illusion.
The first time I was actually aware of this concept was during the six months our son spent in Spain with the 4-H program. Before he left, I had comforted myself that Spain was rarely in the news. He should have a safe trip. After he departed, Spain cropped up in the news everyday…because I was looking for it.
While he came home safely after his six-month venture, he had encountered a few harrowing experiences like bull fighting a calf with budding horns with a 4-H club. But most of his stories from Spain entertained and educated the entire family.
Although we all will continue to see what we look for, we truly reward ourselves whenever we can venture forth, like the bear of nursery rhyme, “to see what we can see.” Maybe we’ll be like the bear and only see “the other side of the mountain.” But maybe, just maybe, we view something we’ve never seen before and save it in our memories.
2022
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