RICHARD RIDDERINKHOF’S QUESTION IS FOR MARTE OTTEN (BRAIN & COGNITION):
Dear Marte,
Your recent finding that human memory gets unreliable within seconds incited massive media exposure. Congrats! But how adequate was that coverage, in your experience? In interacting with the media, how do you navigate the balance between scientific accuracy and mediagenic coolness? At the end of the day, was the whole circus just an amusing (or perhaps bothersome) distraction, or was it somehow enriching to you? For instance, did any exciting new questions (or insights) arise?
Richard
Marte Otten’s (Brain & Cognition) answer:
Dear Richard,
Thank you for your question, bringing me back to fun times! I don’t often have the opportunity to talk about my research in depth (or perhaps I don’t take the opportunity? I am always afraid that I will bore people) so it was just plain nice to have a series of dedicated listeners to whom I could explain both the big idea and the minute details of these experiments. It was even more fun that it was their job, and not mine, to condense my rambling into a readable article.
Your first question is so relevant: how to balance accuracy and coolness. I very explicitly aimed not to oversell our results, but also not to undersell (something that I did earlier on in my research career, when no journalist would ever call me back after the initial exploratory talk). And here, that was easy. The implications of this paper are truly fun: People can confidently report totally false memories about things they saw only seconds ago, particularly when what they see did not match their expectations. But there are a host of caveats, as with all research: The memory task was very difficult, and the stimuli were a bit artificial (real letters as stimuli that match a person’s expectations, and reverse-rotated letters for the category of unexpected stimuli that were more likely to be misrembered). But I layered these caveats in with the broader, juicy, perspective, which is definitely also there. Our experiments highlight the role of predictive processing in cognition, and there are so many sources of expectation-based short-term memory illusions that we still haven’t explored. You could think of stereotypes, misinformation, etc…
I guess this also brings me to the second part of your question: what did I take away from this experience? Well, quite a lot, and all of it is positive. Getting this particular paper published was a slog, honestly. It got rejected a whole bunch of times; we almost abandoned the project altogether! It did not feel like anyone was interested in hearing what we had to say. So, when it turned out that people did want to listen, it was just fabulous. Talking to journalists really helped me to see where the potential of this research lies. Without this media attention, we would have probably been happy to get the paper published, and be done with it. But after this brief media frenzy, we are inspired and motivated to do more experiment, and learn more.
Marte
Marte Otten’s question is for Allard Feddes (Social Psychology):
Dear Allard,
Nowadays, every other newspaper article or talkshow discusses polarisation: the idea that society is divided into groups that are increasingly distant from each other, for example at the level of income and housing, but also when it comes to beliefs, ideas and ideologies. You have done a lot of research on radicalisation (the extreme sibling of polarisation?) and de-radicalisation. Are there any principles or findings from your research that our society could adopt to counter polarisation?
Marte
RICHARD RIDDERINKHOF’S QUESTION IS FOR MARTE OTTEN (BRAIN & COGNITION):
Dear Allard,
Nowadays, every other newspaper article or talkshow discusses polarisation: the idea that society is divided into groups that are increasingly distant from each other, for example at the level of income and housing, but also when it comes to beliefs, ideas and ideologies. You have done a lot of research on radicalisation (the extreme sibling of polarisation?) and de-radicalisation. Are there any principles or findings from your research that our society could adopt to counter polarisation?
Marte
Marte Otten’s (Brain & Cognition) answer:
Dear Richard,
Thank you for your question, bringing me back to fun times! I don’t often have the opportunity to talk about my research in depth (or perhaps I don’t take the opportunity? I am always afraid that I will bore people) so it was just plain nice to have a series of dedicated listeners to whom I could explain both the big idea and the minute details of these experiments. It was even more fun that it was their job, and not mine, to condense my rambling into a readable article.
Your first question is so relevant: how to balance accuracy and coolness. I very explicitly aimed not to oversell our results, but also not to undersell (something that I did earlier on in my research career, when no journalist would ever call me back after the initial exploratory talk). And here, that was easy. The implications of this paper are truly fun: People can confidently report totally false memories about things they saw only seconds ago, particularly when what they see did not match their expectations. But there are a host of caveats, as with all research: The memory task was very difficult, and the stimuli were a bit artificial (real letters as stimuli that match a person’s expectations, and reverse-rotated letters for the category of unexpected stimuli that were more likely to be misrembered). But I layered these caveats in with the broader, juicy, perspective, which is definitely also there. Our experiments highlight the role of predictive processing in cognition, and there are so many sources of expectation-based short-term memory illusions that we still haven’t explored. You could think of stereotypes, misinformation, etc…
I guess this also brings me to the second part of your question: what did I take away from this experience? Well, quite a lot, and all of it is positive. Getting this particular paper published was a slog, honestly. It got rejected a whole bunch of times; we almost abandoned the project altogether! It did not feel like anyone was interested in hearing what we had to say. So, when it turned out that people did want to listen, it was just fabulous. Talking to journalists really helped me to see where the potential of this research lies. Without this media attention, we would have probably been happy to get the paper published, and be done with it. But after this brief media frenzy, we are inspired and motivated to do more experiment, and learn more.
Marte
Marte Otten’s question is for Allard Feddes (Social Psychology):
Dear Allard,
Nowadays, every other newspaper article or talkshow discusses polarisation: the idea that society is divided into groups that are increasingly distant from each other, for example at the level of income and housing, but also when it comes to beliefs, ideas and ideologies. You have done a lot of research on radicalisation (the extreme sibling of polarisation?) and de-radicalisation. Are there any principles or findings from your research that our society could adopt to counter polarisation?
Marte
