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Why We Remember What We Remember
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Short Term Memory. There are typically six reasons why information stored in our short term memory.
1. primacy effect - information that occurs first is typically remembered better than information occurring later. When given a list of words or numbers, the first word or number is usually remembered due to rehearsing this more than other information.
2. recency effect - often the last bit of information is remembered better because not as much time has past; time which results in forgetting.
3. distinctiveness - if something stands out from information around it, it is often remembered better. Any distinctive information is easier to remember than that which is similar, usual, or mundane.
4. frequency effect - rehearsal, as stated in the first example, results in better memory. Remember trying to memorize a formula for your math class. The more you went over it, the better you knew it.
5. associations - when we associate or attach information to other information it becomes easier to remember. Many of us use this strategy in our professions and everyday life in the form of acronyms.
6. reconstruction - sometimes we actually fill in the blanks in our memory. In other words, when trying to get a complete picture in our minds, we will make up the missing parts, often without any realization that this is occurring.
Long Term Memory. Information that passes from our short term to our long term memory is typically that which has some significance attached to it. Imagine how difficult it would be to forget the day you graduated, or your first kiss. Now think about how easy it is to forget information that has no significance; the color of the car you parked next to at the store or what shirt you wore last Thursday. When we process information, we attach significance to it and information deemed important is transferred to our long term memory.
There are other reasons information is transferred. As we all know, sometimes our brains seem full of insignificant facts. Repetition plays a role in this, as we tend to remember things more the more they are rehearsed. Other times, information is transferred because it is somehow attached to something significant. You may remember that it was a warm day when you bought your first car. The temperature really plays no important role, but is attached to the memory of buying your first car.
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Phobia
The term phobia, which comes from the Ancient Greek word for the fear (fobos), denotes a number of psychological and psychological conditions that can range from serious disabilities to common fears. Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorder. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 5.1 and 21.5 percent of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.
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Most psychologists and psychiatrists divide phobias into three categories. Social phobias – fears to do with other people and social relationships such as performance anxiety, fears of eating in public, etc. Specific phobias – fear of a single specific panic trigger, like dogs, flying, running water and so on. Agoraphobia – a generalized fear of leaving your home or your small familiar ‘safe’ area, and of the inevitable panic attacks that will follow. Agoraphobia is the only phobia regularly treated as a medical condition.
Many specific phobias, such as fears of dogs, heights, spider bites, and so forth, are extensions of fears that everyone has. People with these phobias threat them by avoiding the things they fear. Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex causes that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics and brain-chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.
Phobias vary in severity among individuals, with some phobias simply disliking or avoiding the subject of their fear and suffering mild anxiety. Others suffer fully-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms. It is possible for a sufferer to become phobic about virtually anything.
The name of a phobia generally contains a Greek word what the patient fears plus the suffix-phobia. Greeting these terms is something of a word game. Few of these terms are found in medical literature, e.g. cancerophobia is a fear of cancer, deathaphobia is a fear of death or dead things cardiophobia is a fear of heart disease.
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Groupthink
Groupthink is a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 to describe one process by which a group can make bad or irrational decisions. In a groupthink situation, each member of the group attempts to conform his or her opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group. This results in a situation in which the group ultimately agrees on an action which each member might normally consider to be unwise.
Janis’ original definition of the term was “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members” strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” The word groupthink was intended to be reminiscent of George Orwell’s coinages (such as doublethink and duckspeak) from the fictional language Newspeak, which he portrayed in his ideological novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Groupthink tends to occur on committees and in large organizations Janis originally studied the Pearl Harbor bombing, the
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Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Others have cited groupthink as a contributing factor in the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster as well as the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the bankruptcy of Enron, and more recently, the decision to go to war in Irag in 2003.
Janis cited a number of antecedent conditions that would be likely to encourage groupthink. These include high group cohesiveness, directive leadership, lack of norms requiring methodical procedures, high stress from external threats with low hope of a letter solution than the one offered by the leader(s). Janis listed eight symptoms that he said were indicative of groupthink:
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1. Illussion of invulnerability.
2. Unquestioned belief in the inherent morality of the group.
3. Collective rationalization of group’s decisions.
4. Shared stereotypes of outgroup, particularly opponents.
5. Self-censorship; members withhold criticisms.
6. Illusion of unanimity.
7.Direct pressure on dissenters to conform.
8.Self-appointed “mindguards” protect the group from negative information.
Finally, the seven symptoms of decision affected by groupthink:
1.Incomplete survey of alternatives.
2.Incomplete survey of objectives.
3.Failure to examine risks of preferred choice.
4.Failure to re-appraise initially rejected alternatives.
5.Poor information search.
6.Selective bias in processing information at hand.
7.Failure to work out contingency plans.
One mechanism which management consultants recommend to avoid groupthink is to place responsibility and authority for a decision in the hands of a single person who can turn to others for advice. Others advise that a pre-selected individual take the role of disagreeing with any suggestion presented, thereby making other individuals more likely to present their own ideas and point out flaws in others’ – and reducing the stigma associated with being the first to take negative stances.
An alternative to groupthink is a formal consensus decision-making process, which works best in a group whose aims are cooperative rather than competitive, where trust is able to build up, and where participants are willing to learn and apply facilitation skills.
Appendix 4
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