Psychology and More

The New York Times has a short piece by Gary Marcus, author of a book on memory — Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind — which relates to social psychology and how our decisions are influenced by our memory systems.

Idea Lab - Memory - New York Times:

The dubious dynamics of memory leave us vulnerable to the predations of spin doctors (because a phrase like “death tax” automatically brings to mind a different set of associations than “estate tax”), the pitfalls of stereotyping (in which easily accessible memories wash out less common counterexamples) and what the psychologist Timothy Wilson calls “mental contamination.” To the extent that we frequently can’t separate relevant information from irrelevant information, memory is often the culprit.

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind (Gary Marcus)

Technorati Tags: memory, psychology, social psychology