Atlas City Project

Cognitive psych is so fun to mess around with. It's of great benefit to us all to understand how and why we think certain ways, and also how it may be altered. Here's a fun memory test that I just ran into. Read the following list:
rest
nap
sheets
night
snooze
bed
doze
pillow
dream
snore
awake
tired
wake
blanket
slumber
nap
yawn
drowsy


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Now get a piece of paper and write what you can remember down, don't cheat!


This test checks for false memories and discovered many people recalled words that weren't on the list, but had semantic similarities. Looking over your list now, did you write down the word "sleep"? Many people did because of the commonality of it to the semantic meanings of the other words on the list.

A similar experiment were participants watched a movie of a car accident. They were then asked "About how fast were the cars going when they X each other?" X is replaced with hit, smashed, collided, bumped or contacted depending on the group. "Smashed" had the highest rate (40.8 MPH average) while "contacted" had the lowest (31.8).

Semantic memory is a good part of the reason people remember different events do different extents. It's also a great way to skew results in polls and surveys. By changing one word you can alter the semantic strength of the question. Be careful of what you think you remember.

wow that is very interesting.

it is as if we can trick our minds

Ya, been reading on "false memory" and "inputting memory" that never existed. Surprisingly easy to do in the right circumstances. Priming people for what you want them to think and believe works really well. Using certain keywords makes their minds begin to ASSUME the direction you are going and you can make them reach the conclusion you wanted without actually directly stating it.

chase this really reminds me of Inception

What a great movie that was. Had to see it twice to fully enjoy the complexity.