Psychology: The Seven Sins Of Memory

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There are seven sins of memory in psychology. Transience, absent-mindedness, and blocking are the sins of forgetting. Misattribution, bias, persistence, and suggestibility are the sins of undesired or changed remembrance (Murray, 2003). According to Murray (2003), transience is “the decrease of accessibility of memory over time” (p. 28). An example of transience could be an older person that is forgetful of events or occurrences. The sin of absent-mindedness occurs when not enough attention is being drawn towards something and the process of encoding is not done correctly (Percy, 2003). Forgetting where a commonly used or handled item was placed is an example of absent-mindedness. Blocking is when information that is stored cannot be reachable for a short amount of time (Murray, 2003). Blocking could be described as knowing what is wanted to say but not being able to find the right words to communicate. Misattribution is when someone recalls something correctly, but does not pair it with the correct source (Percy, 2003). An example of the sin of bias could be someone not liking, or essentially avoiding a particular food or drink beause in the past, they became sick shortly after consuming it. According to Murray (2003), persistence is “unwanted recollections that people can't forget” (p. 28). Persistence could be when an …show more content…

Suggestibility is the collaboration of incorrect information that was put into memory from outside sources (Murray, 2003). An

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