When I Saw Becomes I Did That

This article talks about how observing actions influences your memory about the actions. It talks about research that showed that imagining yourself doing something can lead you to believe that you actually did it, even if you never did. This article focuses on another study, that had people do simple actions for 15 seconds. Some actions were only read about, while others were read about and also performed. Then they watched videos of people performing some of the actions they read about, some of the actions they did themselves, and some new actions. After two weeks, the participants were given a list of actions and asked which ones they had themselves performed. The study showed that people consistently were more likely to believe that they themselves had performed actions that they had seen someone else perform in a video, than actions they had only read about. For the study, the subjects were even told that people often create false memories of performing actions after seeing someone else do it, but they still made these false memories. The author of this article says that this happens because of something called "goal contagion," which is when a person adopts the goals of someone else that they are watching. This phenomenon can be useful, because if you see someone else perform an action, and you yourself have to do it in the future, you will be more confident and capable of performing this action if you remember it in such a way that you think you have already done it. I can relate to this phenomenon, because there have been many times I have gotten into arguments with my friends about who did something. I was convinced that I was right, and it was actually me who did something, but now I'm not sure if it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Then again it could have been their mind playing tricks.