Is it true that the five childhood memories define our personality?

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Can you arrange your memories? What if you were asked to identify the five most important? What will they reveal about you? He became famous in the year 2015 for the animated film vice versaThe idea of ​​”central memory” recently won TikTok. According to this concept, our personality and behaviors will be determined by five primary memories of our childhood. A false belief or a well-established scientific fact?

Well, this “central memory” thing is a complete fabrication, Reveal ScienceAlert. Although our memory contributes greatly to our psychological state, this idea is wrong. First of all, our memory capacity knows no bounds: autobiographical memories preserved in the long term are far from being limited to five.

When failing to define our personality, they occupy three main functions, which psychologists have described: they “self-definition”, that is, we get to know ourselves through our previous experiences; They enhance social contact with others when we tell them; Finally, our memory has a guiding function because it helps us draw lessons from the past to solve problems.

It is important to emphasize that memories are not only from our childhood – quite the contrary. Known as the ‘memories bump’, this phenomenon shows that our strongest memories are concentrated in early adulthood, between the ages of 15 and 25, while our memories in our early years are relatively poor. One explanation is that our most formative experiences typically occur in late adolescence, when self-esteem is stabilizing.

When memory plays tricks on us

In any case, no one can predict which memories will be lasting, even if emotional events are especially firmly rooted in our memory. It is also possible that we will forget many of the details that seemed necessary to us at the time.

Also, beware of inaccurate memories. Just because we consider some of them to be part of our long-term memory doesn’t mean they are real. In fact, all of our memories are likely to be moving, forgotten, or contain critical errors. These errors are partly due to the workings of our memory.

When we encode a memory, we remember only the basics and some details. Thus, if we want to tell one of our adventures, we will reconstruct what is essential and what we remember, and we will fill in the gaps of history to fill in what we have forgotten.

In addition, we tend to reinterpret the meaning of an event according to the different stages of our lives. For example, the happy memory of an engagement may turn bleak with the introduction of negative emotions if the romantic relationship ever ends. Every time we remember our past, we have the opportunity to change its details.

Although the concept of “main memory” was completely invented, it is still useful – and the evidence here – to highlight the importance of our memory.