When was the last time you misplaced your keys, glasses, or cell phone?

Or ran into an acquaintance and couldn't come up with their name no matter how hard you racked your brain?

Have you ever gotten into an argument with a sibling over whether a childhood memory really happened the way you thought it did?

Both of you sure that your memory was correct? Human memory is imperfect. For most people,

it's easy to think of examples of these common but frustrating situations. Over the past several

decades, psychologists have begun to gain a better understanding of how our brains remember,

misremember, and forget. So why is our memory so fallible? What are the most common memory errors

and what are their consequences? How does memory change as we age? Is there anything we can do

to improve our memory or keep it sharp? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast

of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Daniel Shachter, a professor

of psychology at Harvard University. His research uses the tools of psychology and neuroscience

to study how memory works and why it is so often prone to error and distortion.

His 2001 book, The Seven Sins of Memory, categorized and explained the most common memory failures.

A 20th anniversary edition of the book is due out in September, and it includes updates on how our understanding of memory has advanced over the past two decades.

It also explores new topics, including

how technology may be affecting our memory and how memory is intertwined with our ability to plan

for the future. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Shachter. Nice to be here. So, as I said, your

book is called the Seven Sins of Memory. Can you, first of all, talk about those sins are why you call

them sins, and some of them are, as you say, sins of omission and sins of commission. What are

the differences? Back around 2000, 1999, as I was kind of surveying the literature on memory errors,

it struck me that, while psychologists had known for decades, that memory is prone

to error, nobody had really tried to organize our knowledge and try to suggest the way of

...