The Myth of Intention
In this chapter Vedantam sppeaks about a women who was raped and was certain, 100 % sure, that this man that they brought in was her assulter. After the man spent 14 years in prison, 14 years of her being positive that he was guilty, they found DNA evidence that he was not her rapist. When the event occured she had memorized every detail of the mans face but in the midst of the trail she had gotten caught up and missed that this man had crooked teeth and the other had not. He then explains all of the factors that explained why she was sur esh ewas right.
1. All of the pictures of men she went through weakend her memorry of the real rapist
2. Your emotions effect you rmemory and judgement
3. To keep herself from further distress the victim enabled a defensive mechanism that kept her from feeling her doughts
4. She left out the teeth in her innicial description because her mind told her it was too ordinary and unimportant
All of these things were not the victims fault, they were natural instincts. This reminds me of a ted video I saw called "Why Eyewitnesses Get it Wrong" in it Scott Fraser explainted how our minds fill in the gaps in our memory with out our control. So we may believe that something is 100% true it could not be. Kind of a scary concept that we cant even trust ourselves, but it is true.
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