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   Brian Williams told a tale - but it could be how he really remembers what   
   happened   
      
      
   February 13, 2015 5.43am EST   
    Almut Hupbach   
      
   NBC news anchor Brian Williams and his memory "conflation" have become the   
   media story. Phil McCarten / Reuters   
      
   Many of us have asked ourselves in the past few days: can you really falsely   
   remember something as significant as being in a helicopter that was shot down?   
   And many of us probably think "No way," and quickly conclude that NBC news   
   anchor Brian Williams    
   invented this story to embellish his public image as a news anchor who put his   
   life in danger.   
      
   But before condemning Brian Williams as a narcissistic liar, let's take a   
   closer look at what memory research has to say about false memories and   
   memories of traumatic experiences. This work suggests it's plausible that   
   Williams is truthfully describing    
   what he remembers.   
      
   Brian Williams correctly remembered the incident in Iraq shortly after it   
   happened. At that time, he recounted being in a helicopter flying behind   
   another helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. However, later,   
   he "misremembered" being in    
   the helicopter that was struck.   
      
      
   The controversy hinges on what really happened on a Chinook helicopter like   
   this one. Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters   
   Click to enlarge   
   How is it possible to remember something initially and then change your   
   account of the experience later on? You can imagine that being in a helicopter   
   under Iraqi attack would be extremely stressful. This stress could have been   
   further exacerbated by the    
   fact that for some time while in the air, Williams probably didn't know   
   exactly what was going on or why his helicopter had to land. There was lots of   
   uncertainty.   
      
   In times of stress, our attention narrows - we can only take in the crucial   
   aspects of an experience, ignoring details that are not central to our   
   survival. So Williams most likely already started out with a fuzzy memory.   
   Given its traumatic character,    
   we can assume that Williams recounted this memory many times in the weeks and   
   months following the incident, frequently reactivating the memory, and   
   potentially imagining different outcomes.   
      
   We know from research that memory reactivation makes memories temporarily   
   fragile. Imagining something that didn't happen but is related to what   
   actually did happen can rather easily infiltrate our memories.   
      
   And these distortions are more likely to occur with time. This can explain why   
   eyewitness reports are so unreliable. In the aftermath of an event, especially   
   a significant one, people ask questions, and make suggestions - and the way   
   the questions are    
   asked and what they suggest alters memories.   
      
   In a famous study, memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus showed people a video of   
   an accident involving two cars. Later she asked subjects to estimate the speed   
   of the cars at the time of collision and whether there was broken glass.   
   Answers differed    
   depending on whether the experimenter used the verb "hit" or "smash" in her   
   questions, with the latter causing higher speed estimates and memories of   
   broken glass - a false memory, because there was no broken glass in the video.   
      
   If you're still skeptical whether Williams could have suffered an   
   unintentional memory failure, consider new research by Julia Shaw and Stephen   
   Porter. They were able to implant completely made-up rich false memories into   
   ordinary people in a lab setting.   
    Over as few as three interviews, they suggested to subjects that they had   
   committed a crime in adolescence. Asking them detailed questions about the   
   crime - which never happened - caused 70% of participants to believe that they   
   had indeed committed the    
   crime. Beyond just believing it, they remembered the made-up memory in as much   
   detail as they remembered true memories from their past.   
      
   Additionally, most of us are quite confident that we remember important events   
   - for instance, where we were and what we did when we first heard about the   
   9/11 attacks. It turns out that subjective confidence is a very bad indicator   
   of memory accuracy.    
   Despite our subjective feelings of accuracy, these "flashbulb memories" are   
   subject to forgetting and distortion just like any other memory.   
      
      
   Time to consign the idea of memories as faithful videos to the dustbin of   
   history.  Rob Pearce, CC BY   
   Click to enlarge   
   What does all this tell us? Our memories are not like videos stored away in   
   the library of our brain, waiting to be replayed. Instead, our memories are   
   always reconstructions and, as such, highly malleable.   
      
   All that being said, it could of course also be the case that Brian Williams   
   intentionally told the story wrong. Although many people have jumped to this   
   conclusion, it contradicts commonsense. Why would he change his account after   
   he had originally told    
   the truth in public, and despite knowing that there were several witnesses to   
   the event? As a news anchor, he is all too familiar with the dangers of false   
   reporting. Rather than the fog of war, the vagaries of memory are likely to   
   blame in this    
   controversy.   
      
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