But it’s not. Your brain is you. And here the subject matter edges over into the philosophical areas. Are we as individuals really just the product of a mass of neurons firing off sparks, or are we more than the sum of our parts? Does the mind really arise from the brain, or is it in fact some separate entity, intrinsically linked to it but not exactly “the same”? What does this mean for free will and our ability to strive for higher goals? These are questions that thinkers have grappled with ever since it was figured out that our consciousness resides in the brain. (This seems obvious now, but for many centuries it was believed the heart was the seat of our minds and the brain had more mundane functions such as cooling or filtering blood. Echoes of this time still persist in our language; for example, “Do what your heart tells you.”20)
These are discussions for elsewhere, but suffice it to say that scientific understanding and evidence strongly imply that our sense of self and all that goes with it (memory, language, emotion, perception, and so on) is supported by processes in our brain. Everything you are is a feature of your brain, and as such much of what your brain does is dedicated to making you look and feel as good as possible, like an obsequious lackey to a popular celebrity, who prevents her hearing any criticism or negative publicity for fear of upsetting her. And one of the ways it can do this is by modifying your memories to make you feel better about yourself.
There are numerous memory biases or flaws, many of which aren’t noticeably egotistical in nature. However, a surprising number appear to be largely egotistical, especially the one simply called the egocentric bias, where our memories are tweaked or modified by the brain to present events in a manner that makes us look better.21 For example, if recalling an occasion where they were part of a group decision, people tend to remember that they were more influential and integral to the final decision than they in fact were.
One of the earliest reports of this stems from the Watergate scandal, where a whistleblower told investigators all about the plans and discussions that he had taken part in that led to the political conspiracy and cover-up. However, later listening to the recordings of these meetings, an accurate record of the discussions, revealed John Dean got the overall “gist” of what happened, but many of his claims were alarmingly inaccurate. The main problem was that he’d described himself as an influential key figure in the planning, but the tapes revealed he was a bit player at most. He hadn’t set out to lie, just to boost his own ego; his memory was “altered” to conform to his sense of identity and self-importance.22
It doesn’t have to be government-toppling corruption though; it can be minor things such as believing you performed better at sports than you genuinely did, or recalling you caught a trout when it was in fact a minnow. It’s important to note that when this happens it’s not an example of someone lying or exaggerating to impress people; it often happens with memories even if we’re not telling anyone about them. That last bit is key: we genuinely believe our memory’s version of events to be accurate and fair. The modifications and tweaks made to give a more flattering portrayal of ourselves is, more often than not, entirely unconscious.
There are other memory biases that can be attributed to ego. There’s choice-supportive bias, when you have to choose one of several options, and you remember it as being the best of all available options, even if it wasn’t at the time.23 Each option could be practically identical in terms of merit and potential outcome, but the brain alters your memory to downplay the rejected ones and big-up the option you went with, making you feel you chose wisely, even if it was totally random.
There’s the self-generation effect, where you’re better at recalling things that you’ve said than at recalling things other people have said.24 You can never be sure how accurate or authentic someone else is being, but you believe you are when you say something, and seeing as it’s your memory that amounts to the same thing.
More alarming is the own-race bias, where people struggle to recall and identify people from races other than their own.25 Ego isn’t exactly subtle and thoughtful, and it may be expressed in crude ways such as prioritizing or emphasizing people of the same or similar racial background over those who aren’t, as yours is the “best” one. You may not think this at all, but your subconscious isn’t always so sophisticated.
You may have heard the saying, “Hindsight is 20–20,” usually used to dismiss someone claiming prior knowledge of an event after it’s happened. It’s generally assumed that the person is exaggerating or lying, because they didn’t use this prior knowledge when it would actually have been useful. For example: “If you were so certain that Barry had been drinking, why did you let him drive you to the airport?”
While it is no doubt true that some people do exaggerate their awareness in this manner to seem smarter and better informed, there is actually such a thing as the hindsight bias in memory, where we genuinely remember past events as being predictable even though we couldn’t have hoped to predict them at the time.26 Again, this isn’t some self-aggrandizing fabrication, our memories genuinely do seem to support this notion. The brain alters memories to boost our ego, making us feel as if we were better informed and in control.
How about the fading-affect bias,27 where emotional memories for negative events fade more quickly than positive ones. The memories themselves may remain intact, but the emotional component of them can fade with time, and it seems that, in general, unpleasant emotions fade faster than nice ones. The brain clearly likes it if nice things happen to you, but doesn’t dwell on the “alternative” stuff.
These are just some of the biases that could be seen as demonstrations of ego overriding accuracy. It’s just something your brain does all the time. But why?* Surely an accurate memory of events would be far more useful than some self-serving distortion?
Well, yes and no. Only some biases have this apparent connection to ego, whereas others have the opposite. Some people demonstrate things like “persistence,” which in this case is when memories of a traumatic event keep recurring, despite the individual’s lack of desire to think about them.28 This is quite a common phenomenon, and doesn’t need to be something especially damaging or disturbing. You might be wandering along the road on your way somewhere, casually thinking about nothing in particular, and your brain suddenly says, “Remember when you asked that girl out at the school party and she laughed in your face in front of everyone and you ran away but collided with a table and landed in the cakes?” Suddenly you’re racked with shame and embarrassment thanks to a twenty-year-old memory, apropos of nothing. Other biases, like childhood amnesia or context dependence, suggest limitations or inaccuracies arising from the way the memory system works, rather than anything ego-based.