01x08 - Do You Know Yourself?

[bunniefuu]

[soft dramatic music]

- Hi, I'm Michael Stevens,

but who are you?

Do you even know who you are?

Are you your memories?

- I don't remember that.

- I don't remember that at all.

- Are you the choices you make?

The focus tester

is actually a magician.

- That's scary. [chuckles]

- Or are you your past?

- I hit the back of my head and I forgot my entire life.

Just like you hit a delete button on a computer.

- [quietly] Wow.

[electronic music]

♪ ♪

Have you ever looked at a photograph of yourself

and thought, "That's what I look like?

Ugh."

We often think we look bad

or not right in photos

because photos show us what we really look like

to other people.

The you that you're used to seeing

is mirror you.

Every mirror you look into reverses your face.

Most selfie cameras do this too,

so we tend to prefer that version of ourselves.

If you wanna see yourself in a mirror

the way other people see you in real life,

take two mirrors

and position them at a 90-degree angle.

What you see won't be yourself reversed,

but how you look in real life.

So who would you say you are really?

Is it how you look?

Or is it how you dress?

Or are you the atoms that make you up?

Because all of those things change throughout your life.

Ah, maybe the real common thread,

that which doesn't change,

is your history,

your memory.

But what if we remember things differently

from the way they actually happened.

Does that mean we don't know ourselves?

False memories are

frighteningly easy to create.

Today, we're gonna make some,

and we're gonna have a little fun doing it.

We have created a fake game show

called "Who You Were."

We're gonna bring contestants down memory lane

and have them tell us about their past.

Some of which we're going to completely make up.

We're gonna plant a few little seeds in this mind field

and see if we can grow

some fake memories.

[cheers and applause]

Hi, I'm Michael Stevens,

and welcome to the show

that takes you on a trip down memory lane

from who you are

all the way back through...

"Who You Were."

Please welcome today's very special guest,

Timothy DeLaGhetto. - How's it going, man.

- Thanks for coming in. - Thanks for having me.

- Excited to kinda dive into some memories?

- Yeah, I don't really know what to expect.

- To begin, though, let's give the audience

a taste of your life.

- Oh, my God, let's take a look.

- So Tim was raised in California

where he and his parents owned and operated

a Thai food restaurant. - [laughing]

- Tim found popularity as a rapper,

comedian, actor, and Internet personality,

and has attracted over 3 million subscribers.

In order to--to kind of see how you became who you are today

let's go back to who you were. - Let's do it.

- We spoke to your parents... - Mm-hmm.

- And they told us some of their favorite memories

from when you were very, very young.

- Okay. - I'm going to start

with some true stories

before I slip in the false memory.

When you were seven,

you were pretty much held prisoner

by a very controlling school girl.

The girl took control of your life

and always wanted to know what you were doing.

- I remember her. Like, she was,

like, my--my best friend, sort of,

but then she was also very, like, possessive of me.

- But you guys aren't together still.

- No, we might be Facebook friends.

- Okay. Here's a memory.

You weren't a crybaby on the first day of school...

- Yeah. - Until you noticed that

all the other kids were crying and then you joined in.

- You know, I empathize with people...

- Right. - And, uh, I was just kind of,

like, helping them feel like we were all a team.

- Now here's the fake story

we made up out of thin air.

Here's another memory. - Mm-hmm.

- When you were about four or five years old...

- Mm-kay. - You actually took a ride

in a hot air balloon, but you dropped something

from the balloon.

- I don't remember that at all. [laughs]

- Really? - Yeah, like, at all.

- We're going deep--far back. - I didn't even know

I've ever been in a hot air balloon

until you just reminded me. - It was in Echo Park.

- Was it? - Yeah.

- No clue.

- Timothy is not accepting the story as truth yet.

Time for our second subject.

[xylophone trills] [upbeat music]

- Dylan, how are you? - I'm doing great, man.

- You were, uh, inseparable

from you Superman cape when you were young.

Once, you even tried to use your super powers

to stop a car driving down the street.

- Yeah, try to stop a car, like, with my--with my hand

and everything. - Did you succeed?

- You know, the dude hit his brakes.

- Okay, next memory.

So when you were about four or five years old,

you took a ride in a hot air balloon

and you dropped something.

- Huh.

Uh...

I'm not sure if I remember that to be honest.

- Sometimes enriching the false story

with a realistic detail can trigger the brain

to begin filling in the memory. Here goes.

Did you have a favorite toy or anything

that maybe you had brought?

- Oh, I mean, I had, like, some action figures, I think.

Um, I do remember, like, losing one.

I'm not sure, like--that was, like, the--what happened.

If I, uh, was in a hot air balloon.

That's a crazy adventure

if I actually, like, did something like that.

- Hi, Victoria.

When you were around four or five years old,

you took a ride in a hot air balloon

and you dropped something.

- I don't remember that. - Four or five years old?

Up in the air? - No.

- How many times you been in a hot air balloon?

- None.

- Of course none of the subjects

remember the balloon ride.

It never happened,

but we are not done with them yet.

24 hours from now,

we'll take our subjects to Echo Park...

- Okay.

- The site of their supposed childhood balloon ride,

to see if any of the seeds I planted today

have taken root.

This is where you took your first hot air balloon ride.

- Are you serious? - I'm serious.

[soft dramatic music]

We might not be able

to remember our past accurately all the time,

but at least we have direct insight

into our own mental states.

We know how we feel,

what we like,

and why.

Except we don't.

Psychologists call our tendency to overvalue

how we explain our own behavior

while distrusting that other people

truly understand their own...

An interesting manifestation of this bias

is something called...

It is surprisingly easy

to fool someone into believing

they made a choice that they never did,

and the amazing thing is that

they'll also defend that fake choice

as if it were what they had always wanted.

[film reel humming]

We feel like we know ourselves pretty well.

We know why we like the things we like.

We know why we decided to do the things that we did.

But do we?

[dramatic music]

Today, we'll be showing our subjects sets of photos

and asking them to choose the photo

of the person they'd prefer to work with.

But this isn't exactly what it looks like.

The focus tester

is actually a magician

who will be using slight of hand

to swap some of the faces they choose

for faces they've rejected.

Will they catch the trick?

Or will they justify and explain a decision

they never actually made?

- Thank you for participating in this study

of first impressions in the workplace.

You will be shown sets of faces and be asked to select

which person you would prefer to work with.

Are you ready to begin? - I am, yes.

- Cool. So would you rather

work with person "A" or person B?

- Person B. - Person B.

[soft dramatic music]

That's as complex as it gets. - [laughs]

I can do this. - Person "A" or Person B?

- Uh, B.

B.

"A."

B.

"A." - Perfect.

So we've made a pile of your ideal workplace colleagues.

Effectively. - Okay.

- Uh, now part two is to--

if you could fill out the "women in the workplace"

segment of the questionnaire.

- All of this business about filling out a survey,

it's just to distract them from what's about to happen

because our magician is gonna make a swap.

There it is.

Two of the eight photos have been swapped out

for pictures our subject rejected.

What will she say when presented

with photos of people she didn't actually choose?

- Now, on their own merits, I wanna ask you

what it was about them that made you pick them.

- Okay. - We'll start with a picture

that she did pick before we slip in the rejects.

- So why did you want to work with this person?

- She looks nice. She looks really nice,

but I think the person I compared her to

didn't look very friendly. - Gotcha.

- Here's another pair of photos

where she had a clear preference.

- Person B. - Person B.

- Now we're going to show her

the picture she actually rejected.

- Why did you want to work with this person.

- Um, she just looked nicer than the other one.

[laughs] - Yeah.

- That was one where the other girl

didn't look very nice at all.

- Is she just misremembering

this one choice?

How about another photo she rejected?

- Why did you prefer to work with this person?

- She looks super sweet.

- So that was what you were thinking

when you chose that--chose her? - Mm-hmm.

I feel like she would be one of those girls

that would, like, on the birthdays

get you the card and... [laughs]

She just looks really sweet.

- This isn't just simple misremembering.

This is fabricating

a past that never happened.

Will any of our other subjects

justify choices that they never made?

- Person "A" or Person B?

- "A."

- Now we'll present him with the photo he rejected.

- So why did you choose to work with this person?

- She gave off the appearance

of a genuine person

who would be easy to work with.

- People are completely fabricating

justifications for things they never even did.

I think we could actually up the ante.

We've been swapping two of the eight faces,

now we'll swap four.

Let's see if she justifies

the photos that she actually rejected.

- I liked her--her look.

I like to work with confidant people,

so, to me, she looked like a confident person.

As a woman, I wanna, like,

help other women grow and succeed

and give them advice

and I gravitated towards that picture

because of that reason.

She looked like a type of person you could confide in

and ask advice and learn from her experiences.

So I think she had that type of look.

She looks like she might be, like, a wise type of person.

She looks confident.

So I think that's why I picked her.

- She seems so sure of her decisions,

but let's give her one last look.

- In particular, I'm curious about how you feel

about these four.

- You know, there's the confidence

and, um, kindness, and somebody young.

I feel like that would be

people I could work with, so...

I-I stand by my decisions. - Cool.

- Yes...[laughs] - Perfect.

- Yes. - The interesting thing

about this study... - Okay.

- Is they are not actually the ones you chose.

- No?

- These ones were. - Oh.

- They were switched while you were filling in

the questionnaire. It's this phenomenon,

what's known as choice blindness.

If we think we made a choice,

we will find a way to justify that choice...

- Ah. - Even if we don't know

that's what we made. - Okay.

I was trying to justify these four...

[laughs] 'Cause I forgot

that I picked those four. - It's like a debate.

Like, no matter what-- what side I was on,

I was gonna give reasons for that.

I'm, uh, I'm not happy that I did that,

but, um, that's the reason why.

- You pulled this complete switcheroo on me,

and I wasn't even, like, conscious about it.

That's scary.

♪ ♪

- You may think you know why you do the things you do,

but, in a pinch, your mind can replace the truth,

that actual past with completely new explanations

that you will confidently believe

to be exactly what happened.

But what if fabricating the past

is all you can do?

That may be the case for someone with...

When you can't remember your life at all,

what happens to your sense of self?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

So, Scott, you have

retrograde amnesia. - Correct.

- Tell me what that is, how it happened.

- I walked into a restroom at my office building,

but I slipped on an oily substance,

and hit the back of my head

and suffered, you know--

it was, like, four- or five-inch laceration,

and that gave me retrograde amnesia,

which means everything autobiographical

and historical in my life

were completely erased. - Erased?

- Just like you hit a delete button on a computer.

I've forgotten my entire life.

I had no idea who my wife was.

Her name... my children.

It was absolutely horrifying.

- Wow.

So this happened eight years ago?

- Mm-hmm. - What memories did you have?

You still knew English.

You still knew things like how to ride a bike.

That's a totally different kind of memory.

both: Right.

- Well, when I handed him a toothbrush,

he didn't comb his hair with it.

He put it in his mouth,

but he didn't know what it was called.

- And you didn't remember

ever using one before? - Correct.

- But you didn't have the autobiographical memories

that involved toothbrushes, but you knew how to operate it

'cause that's a procedural memory.

- Right. - Exactly, exactly.

- Wow. - Things like that,

you know, are stored in a different part of the brain.

- So it was almost like

you were--you were born

into this person's body you didn't get to choose.

You have a name, you have a wife,

you have a house, you have a past...

- Mm-hmm. - And you have to just accept

that all of those are what you've been dealt.

- Right, 'cause that's exactly how I felt.

Like I stepped into somebody else's life,

and...

a lot of it I didn't believe.

I just couldn't picture that, you know, I flew airplanes

or--or was in the NFL.

I just--seemed like nothing I would ever do,

and a lot of it, you know, she had to prove to me.

She put together a whole album full of pictures.

She kind of put my life in a chronological order...

- Wow. - And that kind of, you know,

filled some of the gaps of who I was,

and I-I've heard that, you know,

you are who you are

from the things you've experienced

and your memories,

and when I hear that,

it's like a Kn*fe in my heart.

'Cause it's like, "Then who am I?"

- So, Scott, when you're asked, "Who are you?"

what do you say?

- It's hard to answer that question

because I haven't figured out who I am.

I'm developing every day

my personality and who I am,

but inside of my brain,

I don't know who I am.

♪ ♪

- You are the collection of all of your memories.

Right? I mean, that's your story.

Those are things that happened to you

and they're in the past. They can't be changed.

But it can be created.

[film reel humming]

An illuminating Harvard study

found numerous examples of seemingly sane people

who believed they had recovered memories

of past lives and alien abductions,

and there's no deceit.

These people actually believe

that these events occurred.

- And I remember I was just literally scared to death.

- Once people have decided that a memory is real,

the brain can fill in details that never happened.

Especially if the clues you're getting

or what people are telling you isn't entirely accurate.

Leading cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus

made that point in a 1996 experiment

where she convinced over 25% of the subjects

that they had been lost in a shopping mall as a child.

Your brain will just take those untruths and run with them

and fill in details out of nowhere.

Completely changing your personal history.

♪ ♪

When we last saw our Who You Were subjects,

they did not recall the false memory we planted.

When you were about four or five years old...

- Mm-kay. - You actually took a ride

in a hot air balloon, but you dropped something.

- I'm not sure if I remember that to be honest.

- You took a ride in a hot air balloon,

and you dropped something.

- I don't remember that.

- We've let the memory sink in over night,

and today we're gonna see if physical stimuli

will help solidify this story in their minds.

Today is all about you... - Mm-hmm.

- And a little drive down your memory lane.

- [laughs] - This is where

you rode over in a hot air balloon.

- [laughs] In a hot air balloon?

- That's right.

- Maybe my parents mistaked me

for, like, a--another kid. - Some other kid?

- [laughs] - We'll get out and walk around

and see what can come back.

Let it all soak in,

and tell me

if anything's coming back to you.

- Hmm.

I don't know, man. It's not--it's not popping up.

- You dropped something... - [breathes deeply]

- When you were in this hot air balloon.

Will this be the detail that pushes Tim

to remember the event?

- What could I have dropped?

What did I walk around with back then?

♪ ♪

- I spent another 15 minutes

attempting to kick-start Tim's brain

with details of the false balloon story.

Has anything come back?

♪ ♪

- No. - Hmm.

- [laughs]

- Tim's brain doesn't seem susceptible

to the false memory.

Let's check in with our other subjects.

This is where you took your hot air balloon ride.

- Really? - Yeah.

This is Echo Park? - Yeah.

- And-- - It was about 15 years ago.

- Yeah. - You don't remember any--

anything from this. - No.

- Of course he doesn't. It never happened.

This is where you took your first hot air balloon ride.

- This is? - This is it, yeah.

- Are you serious? - I'm serious.

Does this bring back memories?

- Um...

♪ ♪

- You don't remember anything from this?

- Um...

I do remember, like, something as a kid.

I-I dropped something.

- He dropped something.

Now how do you suppose he got that idea?

You dropped something.

Dylan's mind is gradually taking

an idea we planted

and adopting it as his own memory detail.

- I could have been around here riding my bike,

then we took a hot air balloon ride,

and possibly dropped a Superman cape.

♪ ♪

- For some people,

physical sensations can be an effective trigger

to bring back real or imaginary memories.

What about smells and sounds?

- Well, when I was four or five when I was here,

I remember it smelling...

fresh.

- This sensory memory may be a jumping off point

to begin accepting the false memory.

You remember looking down on the park from above?

- I might remember, um...

♪ ♪

Being able to overlook the water.

Um...

I remember, like, standing over and squatting,

and, like, just, li--

being so happy to be up there

and the wind blowing my hair back,

and my dad kept telling me to sit down,

and I wouldn't sit down. - Yeah, you weren't scared.

- [laughs] - How high up were you?

- Probably, like...

800 feet.

- No kidding. - Yeah.

- Wow.

Victoria's false memory is beginning to take hold

with the help of her imaginative subconscious brain.

What do you remember seeing from up in the hot air balloon?

- The water fountain, for sure...

- Yeah? - And I could have been crazy,

but I think that I could have felt,

like, almost a little bit of mist hit my skin

from the water fountain.

- What color was the balloon?

- I wanna say it was red.

- Red. - Yeah.

Let's see if the seed I planted earlier

has taken hold.

You took a ride in a hot air balloon

and you dropped something.

- I don't remember that.

- You dropped something. - I did.

At that age, I was a huge Barney fan...

- Ah. - And I just, like, remember

just, like--and looking down and him just being gone.

- [laughs] About where did it fall do you think?

- Um...I would say

six or seven blocks away.

- Oh, really?

So not in the water? - No.

- By now, it seems Victoria's brain

has turned our suggested memory

into a complete childhood experience.

- I remember

waking up at, like,

9:00 in the morning,

getting in the car,

and then my mom and I being in the car

having no idea where we were going

'cause he loved to do that.

Just put the family in the car

and just go somewhere, and just, like, surprise us.

- Victoria is personalizing this false memory

by merging it with pleasant details

from her childhood.

- And next thing you know, like, we're just, like, flying over,

like, the whole, like, greater Los Angeles area.

- So who do you think was in the basket with you?

- Well, definitely both my parents.

I know we got something to eat afterwards.

Almost I wanna say, like, a churro or something like that.

- Post-balloon churro. - Yeah.

[laughs] Yeah. - It's a classic.

- Now that our subjects are convinced

that the balloon ride happened...

- [laughs] - Oh, sh*t.

- It's time for a reality check.

Tell your mom, uh, the memory.

- We went, like, on a hot air balloon ride,

and I dropped, I think, my Superman cape.

Why you looking like that? - [laughing]

No, Dylan. That never happened.

That never happened.

- Wait, what? - There was never

a balloon ride.

- We made the whole story up.

Well, you made most of it up.

- Oh, wow. - But isn't that amazing?

Because, remember, we planted that story.

- No, that is. That's actually really crazy.

I-I was actually having these--

these, like, weird, faint memories

of me, like, looking over, like the pond,

and, like, you know-- I don't even know.

- Has Dylan been to Echo Park before?

- Oh, wow. - And now it's Victoria's turn

for a rude awakening from her father.

- Hi. - The story is not true.

- What?

- You've never been in a hot air balloon.

- What're you guys talking about?

Why would you make that up? - Did you truly believe

that you'd been in a hot air balloon?

- Yes.

- You remembered so many details...

- Yes. - Of something

that never happened. - Yes.

- How many times you been in a hot air balloon?

- None.

- So what were you remembering?

- I'm not entirely sure

because I really do feel like I have a memory.

- We all are susceptible to this.

- I really felt like I had experienced that experience.

- And what about our YouTuber, Tim?

- Well, Tim, I'll tell you what. It's not surprising

that you don't remember anything from it.

- Mm-hmm. - 'Cause it never happened.

- I knew it. [laughing]

I was like, "Dude..."

- Tim wasn't susceptible.

But false memories are common

and can have real-world implications.

The innocence Project of the United States claims

that faulty eye-witness memories

account for 72% of convictions

overturned by DNA evidence.

♪ ♪

So who are you?

Well, how could you be any one thing?

You are always changing.

If you can lose track of your past,

and your memories can be altered

or implanted,

in the end, who are you really?

Maybe... you're the stories

you're telling yourself,

and as always,

thanks for watching.

[electronic music]

♪ ♪