FEATURE30 November 2015

Total recall

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People struggle to remember accurately why they have behaved in a certain way. So tools and technologies are constantly emerging to help researchers get closer to people – to observe and interpret their behaviour, as well as to collect data. 

Total recall

It’s October 1968, and Dr George Gallup is describing his faith in our ability to witness our own lives: “To prove or disprove the hypothesis that women could not remember what they had for dinner a week ago, we brought 50 women into our interviewing centre, in Hopewell, New Jersey… we took each one by the hand and led her back through the week, and ended by establishing just what she had been doing one week ago today… We found women could recall details with amazing accuracy, details that I, and everyone else, had assumed they had forgotten.”

Gallup’s interviewing centre was a converted theatre that he had named ‘The Mirror of America’. His point was that the brain, properly stimulated, acted as a “tape recorder”, in his words. The secret of accurate recall, he argued, was simply suitable stimulation: appropriate questioning to encourage the recorder to play back.

Gallup’s mirror, using this method, was likely to be distorted. ...