By Elisabeth Mah People sometimes find themselves in circumstances where a shared experience is remembered very differently. One person might swear that the other person promised to do something while the accused party has no memory of it whatsoever. Discrepancies in memory happen for many reasons. People may simply forget actions and events from the past while others may remember things differently from what actually happened. However, remembering things that did not happen and retaining them as fact can lead to trouble.
What determines how something is remembered?  A recent study fills in the blanks on what contributes to the creation of false memories. Research finds that individuals who feel anxiety about relationships more intensely tend to create more false memories than those who are more secure in their relationships. In particular, the inconsistency in memory specifically occurs when the memory of the experience is just being created rather than maintained or retrieved from long-term memory.
False memory is not always born from negative intent. While it can land on listeners as a lie, these memories may be preceded by social insecurity that changed the quality of what is flagged as important and thus, used to build memory. Individuals who engage in conflict resolution work may benefit from considering how experiences are remembered and why different invested parties may have different historical narratives.Often, memory is not about objective accuracy but the sensation of an experience. Highly anxious individuals may be drawn to emotionally-related information pertaining to social rejection while other details slip through the cracks. The interpretative mind makes up for these shortcomings in data by patching up inconsistent gaps in information in a way that is most favorable to the memory’s narrator. Understanding why a memory narrative is how it is sheds light on what is valued, what is at stake, and what the next steps towards resolution need to be for a given individual or community in crisis.
  Hudson, N.W. & Fraley, C.R. (2018). Does Attachment Anxiety Promote the Encoding of False Memories? An Investigation of the Processes Linking Adult Attachment to Memory Errors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 115, 4, 688-715