The Surprising Ways Your Memory Could Get You in Trouble

People rely on memory for almost all tasks of daily life. Where did you put that piece of fruit you took out of the refrigerator? If you can’t recall where you put it (or if you even took it out of the fridge at all), this could cost you extra time and annoyance as you try to retrace your steps. Generally speaking, and all other things being equal, memory should be your friend, not your foe.

However, there can be times when the Memory Lane your mind sends you down goes in exactly the wrong direction. In a 2024 study, University of California, San Diego’s Nadia Brashier and colleagues argue that it is usually good to be able to dredge out a past solution to a problem when confronted with a new one. But this backfires if you happen to remember a solution that doesn’t work with the present dilemma that you’re in. The easier it is to recall that solution, they note further, the worse the outcome can be. Because it comes to mind so easily, you don’t bother considering the other possibilities that better fit your current situation.

When Memory Works Against You

Retrieval fluency refers to how easily a memory of a past solution comes to mind. It creates problems if it leads to feeling you can handle an actual real-world problem that, in fact, is beyond your abilities. Much of reality TV involves people performing feats that the average person would find beyond their capabilities. Yet, because these images are so easy to remember and come to mind so quickly, you could mistakenly overestimate your own ability to perform them should you confront the same potentially insurmountable odds.

As an example, the UCSD-led author team refers to a prior study in which participants saw a video of a pilot landing a plane. When asked to rate their confidence in landing a plane themselves, the ease with which they remembered the video led them to believe “they could achieve the implausible.” What is particularly odd about this erroneous judgment, further, is that people become more confident when what they recall is someone else—not themselves—performing a feat. Remembering something you did that led to a successful solution could result in some overconfidence, but at least you would have proved yourself worthy at some point of the actual task.

Testing the Retrieval Fluency Effect

Across a set of four experiments, Brashier and her fellow researchers presented participants with “worst-case scenarios” that seemed plausible but unlikely (e.g., falling onto subway tracks). To create a false familiarity with solutions, the research team listed four “expert tips” that could help them get out of the situation (yell to bystanders or wave hands to the train operator, for example). In the next phase, participants viewed 30 more scenarios, half that could be solved with expert tips and half that could not. This time, they were asked to generate their own solutions. In the final step, participants also rated their own feelings of preparedness.

The findings showed that, consistent with the retrieval fluency effect, participants felt more prepared when they were recalling the expert tips than when recalling their own solutions. They also solved the problems more quickly when recalling what experts told them, versus using the solutions they came up with on their own. Although performance was slightly better in the retrieval than self-generating conditions, it was not as large as the difference in sense of preparedness.

Given that the tips were from “experts,” though, Brashier et al. figured that maybe it was the designation as coming from pros that led to this boost in confidence. In the third study, the tips were labeled as coming from peers. These, too, led to higher preparedness ratings, but those ratings weren’t correlated with any advantage in terms of solving the problems more efficiently. A fourth study provided a control condition that ruled out the effect of familiarity with the scenario as an influence on preparedness, in the absence of any tips.

Putting together the findings from the first three studies, the authors concluded that “relying on our pasts to solve current problems can be quite misleading." It was great that participants could apply what they learned from the tips (expert or peer) to go through the steps needed to deal with an emergency. But the consistent pattern of overconfidence they showed based on remembering someone else’s solution, and not those they would generate on their own, could lead people to “misattribute… their ability to handle a crisis themselves.”

How to Do a Memory Check on Yourself

If retrieval fluency can get you in so much potential hot water, what can you do to avoid it? A little knowledge, as the saying goes, becomes a dangerous thing when you enter the so-called “beginner’s bubble.” The mental traps that the UCSD-led author team enumerate extend beyond this simple experiment to such incorrect inferences as taking greater risks on a bicycle while wearing a helmet. You are easily lured into a false sense of security.

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You might laugh at the idea that, after watching a medical drama, you’d be ready to perform brain surgery. But if you think that, because the steps come easily to mind, you could help someone in a less extreme situation, it might be wise to check yourself first.

The key feature of these intriguing studies is that it is the ability to recall something easily that can give you confidence, even if it’s something you’ve only seen and not done. All the Instagram and other craft, cooking, and home repair social media feeds in the world won’t make you an expert unless you use what you learn in actual practice. Seeing someone flip the perfect pancake is great as a visual guide, but it’s not a substitute for practice.

As is true for many studies of memory, problem-solving, and other aspects of the vagaries of the mind, the Brashier et al. study shows how readily we try to find mental shortcuts to make life’s challenges more manageable. Often, these are highly efficient, but just as often, they can be traps.

To sum up, finding the balance between preparation and overconfidence may just be a matter of avoiding retrieval fluency’s seductive ways. When it comes to managing a crisis, knowing your limits can be as important as drawing on your strengths.